118 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



variation to work upon. Though it would be quite pos- 

 sible to make a serviceable fruit out of a haw or a dog- 

 rose, we may well doubt whether in untold ages man 

 could ever make a serviceable fruit out of a heath or a 

 thistle. So far as we can judge, the natural variations 

 which tend toward succulence and pulpiness never seem 

 to manifest themselves at all in the group of plants to 

 which the heaths and the thistles belong. 



It is quite otherwise with the tribe of roses : including 

 not only the peach, the nectarine, the plum, and the 

 cherry ; but also the strawberry, the blackberry, the 

 raspberry, the cloudberry, the apple, the pear, and the 

 mountain-ash as well. Throughout all this family a strong 

 native tendency exists toward the spontaneous produc- 

 tion of juicy fruits. The roses, in fact, are the great 

 fruit-bearers of the world ; just as the grasses are its 

 grain-producers, and the catkin tribe its manufacturers 

 of solid timber. It is interesting to decipher anew the 

 steps by which the chief groups of plants and animals, 

 afterward turned to account by man for his own pur- 

 poses, were originally developed, quite apart from his 

 future needs, by the interaction of an environment in 

 which as yet he bore no share. Just as at the present 

 day, when he settles in a new region teeming with un- 

 tried natural productions, he exploits them all for his 

 own service ; draining gutta-percha here, extracting dye- 

 stuffs there, and discovering new starches in yam or 

 sago-palm, potato or cassava yonder so at his first ap- 

 pearance upon earth he took in hand the various things 

 already evolved in it by pre-existing agencies, and 

 moulded their properties as best he might to his personal 

 uses. Each of them had a function of its own in refer- 

 ence to the needs of the organism to which it belonged : 

 man adapted them to his special human wants. 



