vii.] WHERE PLANTS COME FROM? 157 



duty ; and a most necessary duty it is, and one to be 

 performed with the most conscientious patience and 

 accuracy, so that a sound foundation may be built for 

 future speculations. But young naturalists should act 

 not merely as Nature's registrars and census-takers, 

 but as her policemen and gamekeepers ; and ask every- 

 thing they meet How did you get there ? By what 

 road did you come ? What was your last place of 

 abode ? And now you are here, how do you get your 

 living ? Are you and your children thriving, like 

 decent people who can take care of themselves, or 

 growing pauperised and degraded, and dying out? 

 Not that we have a fear of your becoming a dangerous 

 class. Madame Nature allows no dangerous classes, in 

 the modern sense. She has, doubtless for some wise 

 reason, no mercy for the weak. She rewards each 

 organism according to its works ; and if anything grows 

 too weak or stupid to take care of itself, she gives it its 

 due deserts by letting it die and disappear. So, you 

 plant or you animal, are you among the strong, the 

 successful, the multiplying, the colonising ? Or are 

 you among the weak, the failing, the dwindling, the 

 doomed ? 



These questions may seem somewhat rude : but 

 you may comfort yourself by the thought that plants 

 and animals, though they deserve all kindness, all 

 admiration, deserve no courtesy at least in this 

 respect. For they are, one and all, wherever you 

 find them, vagrants and landlopers, intruders and 

 conquerors, who have got where they happen to be 

 simply by the law of the strongest generally not 

 without a little robbery and murder. They have no 

 right save that of possession ; the same by which the 



