LATEK YEARS OF A PLANT. 213 



and the pear filled with perfumed juice, the olive lost its 

 bitterness, and the wild grasses were converted into waving 

 fields of life-sustaining grain. The influence which the 

 vegetable world thus exercises on the civilization of man, 

 is as yet but little noticed ; only in the great outline has 

 it been observed, that wherever the spontaneous produc- 

 tions of the earth supply him with food, he is completely 

 savage only a degree farther advanced where he plants 

 the palm and the banana but where grain is his principal 

 support, as in the temperate zone, industry and intelligence 

 are most perfectly developed. We are thus taught, that 

 the rich heir is not the happiest, but that the child of 

 the poor man, gifted with industry and indomitable will, 

 has far more power over prosperity. 



Modern science has revealed to us, of late, a higher 

 duty and a nobler purpose in the life of plants. Working 

 in masses they regulate the numerous and comprehensive 

 physical processes of the earth. Theirs is the duty to 

 keep the atmosphere dry or moist, as may be required. 

 On them depends the warmth or the coldness and the fer- 

 tility of our soil ; they alter the climate, change the course 

 of local winds, increase or diminish the quantity of rain, 

 and soften the rigor of the seasons. It is not merely 

 that whole countries and regions look to certain plants 

 for their sole support, or that the life of entire nations 

 is bound up with that of a single tree, like the Mauritius 

 palm, but whole races of men, through numberless gener- 

 ations, can live only where it pleases, under Providence, 

 certain plants to grow and to prosper. 



By far the noblest and most exalted purpose for which 



