Masterpieces of Science 



but the seeming is only a mask for war as unre- 

 lenting as that of weaponed armies. For every 

 ray of the sunbeam, for every atom of food, for 

 every inch of standing room, there is deadly 

 rivalry. To begin the fight is vastly easier than 

 to maintain it, and not one in a hundred of these 

 bantlings will ever know maturity. We have 

 only to do what Darwin did — count the plants 

 that throng a foot of sod in spring, count them 

 again in summer, and at the summer's end, to 

 find how great the inexorable carnage in this 

 unseen combat, how few its survivors. So hard 

 here is the fight for a foothold, for daily bread, 

 that the playfulness inborn in every healthy 

 plant can peep out but timidly and seldom. But 

 when strife is exchanged for peace, when a plant 

 is once safely sheltered behind a garden fence, 

 then the struggles of the battlefield give place 

 to the diversions of the garrison — diversions not 

 infrequently hilarious enough. Now food 

 abounds and superabounds ; henceforth neither 

 drought nor deluge can work their evil will; 

 insect foes, as well as may be, are kept at bay; 

 there is room in plenty instead of dismal over- 

 crowding. The grateful plant repays the care 

 bestowed upon it by bursting into a sportiveness 

 unsuspected, and indeed impossible, amidst the 

 alarms and frays incessant in the wilderness. 

 It departs from parental habits in most astonish- 

 ing fashion , puts forth blossoms of fresh grace of 

 form, of new dyes, of doubled magnitude. The 

 gardener's opportunity has come. He can seize 

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