4 FORESTS AND MANKIND 



they are plants or animals. Scientists call them plant-animals 

 and animal-plants, for they resemble both and they exist along 

 that shadowy borderline between the two a borderline that 

 some day as we penetrate deeper into this baffling question of 

 life forms may disappear. 



And after all, these divisions of plant life and animal life 

 are relatively unimportant. It is much more important to real- 

 ize that both plants and animals are living, growing things and 

 often dependent for their welfare and existence one on the 

 other. Without plants animal life would disappear from the 

 earth and without animal life our plants would be different in 

 many ways. Some plants would even cease to exist. For many 

 of our flowers depend on bees and nectar-seeking insects to 

 spread their pollen to other flowers and form fertile life-bear- 

 ing seeds. Without bees such plants would soon become extinct 

 and without their nectar, life for the bees would become im- 

 possible. So in a sense all nature is a vast partnership to preserve 

 eternally both in animal and plant that vital force called life. 



The secret of this life force its origin, its nature, its ultimate 

 manifestations, still lies in the dark realm of the unknown. We 

 only know that it is handed down from generation to genera- 

 tion of plants and animals throughout all the changing world. 

 And even when nature seems cruel, even when a thousand seed- 

 lings die that one may live^ or when the weaker animal must 

 serve as food for the stronger, even then one may see beyond 

 all this a plan that seeks even at the expense of the individual 

 to preserve the thing that is infinitely more precious and im- 

 portant than the individual life itself. 



Constantly both animals and plants are seeking out and 

 creating surroundings that will make it possible for them to 



