CONCLUSION 307 



of plants: the 'elfin' form is assumed by shrubs of 

 widely separated families in widely separated habitats. 



Botanic gardens, with their conservatories, thus group 

 together plants of the same requirements and modes of 

 life, and provide them as far as possible with the most 

 favourable conditions. Hence the variety of moist 

 tropical hothouses, dry tropical houses, fern and palm 

 houses, temperate houses, alpine rockeries, marshes, &c., 

 endeavouring to copy the conditions of climate and 

 soils suitable to analogous plant forms. It is there 

 that the variety and uniformity of Nature will be best 

 studied in our countries. 



x2 



