PLANTS AND OURSELVES n 



Have you ever felt, while things are growing about you, 

 something in yourself that commands you to grow ; some- 

 thing that makes you know that to grow you must have 

 knowledge, just as plants to grow must have air and water ; 

 something that makes you hungry for learning just as you 

 might be hungry for food? 



It is quite possible that you do not recall having had 

 such a feeling, and, even if you do, you may not see that 

 it and the study of plants are connected. Indeed this 

 very study of plants may seem to you now one of the dull 

 things from which you would like to escape. But you may 

 not be yet a fair judge of such things. Whether you see it 

 or not, there is in the study of plants a chance to get the 

 very thing you want most, yet hardly know you want. 

 That thing is a large true view of life. 



Two things are sure. One is that if you have not yet 

 felt a " thirst for knowledge," then, sooner or later, more 

 or less, you are going to feel it, for it comes to us all as 

 surely as green sprouts come from good seeds. And the 

 other is that the study of plants is necessary if we are to 

 know about life. To learn of plant life is one way to gain 

 an understanding of all life, and nothing is more important 

 to us than that. For this, perhaps, you must take our 

 word. We cannot prove it to you now. We can only 

 promise it as one of the rewards of interest and of atten- 

 tion. 



4. Plants and History. We think of history as the 

 record of mankind, a record of how cities and nations came 

 to be what they are to-day. We do not find much in 

 history about plants, yet plants have had a great deal to 

 do with making cities and nations what they are. They 



