254 ODD HOURS WITH STATURE 



in the success of the flowering plants the essential 

 element is not their ingenious ways of securing 

 seed dispersal, for the relatively unsuccessful ferns 

 manage it better, and not the number of the seeds 

 they produce, for, great though that number often 

 is, it is still insignificant compared with the number 

 of the fern's spores. They succeed better than 

 the ferns, chiefly because they send forth their 

 seeds, each provided with a food supply on which 

 the young plant can live during its tenderest infant 

 days. To begin development the fern spore must 

 fall on a damp place. The place, moreover, must 

 be so conditioned that the infant plant, micro- 

 scopic in size, can almost from its first cell-division 

 draw the material of growth from the environment. 

 At a later stage exceptional conditions are neces- 

 sary before the conjunction of the sexual elements 

 necessary to start the growth of the true fern 

 from the prothallus, which has developed from the 

 spore, can take place. All those difficulties the 

 flowering plant overcomes by giving its seeds 

 something to start life upon, and during its early 

 days every such plant lives not by its own exertions, 

 but on its inheritance. Thus love of offspring 

 may be said to have had its first hint of a begin- 

 ning in the flowering plants, and their great success 

 is their reward for inventing it. 



