508 Minnesota Plant Life. 



The maintenance of a plant, like that of an animal, depends, 

 in the words of Herbert Spencer, upon a continuous adjustment 

 between internal and external conditions. If this adjustment 

 ceases to be made, death is the result. Every fundamental 

 problem of life that confronts the animal, confronts also the 

 plant. The solution may be by different processes, but solu- 

 tion there must be in the one instance as in the other. Struc- 

 turally and physiologically the living substance of plants and of 

 animals shows many resemblances, and it is not at all 

 erroneous to say that plants and animals are but different man- 

 ifestations of the organizing power of living substance. In 

 plants the constructive processes preponderate, in animals the 

 energy-producing; but fundamentally the two kinds of creatures 

 are much more decidedly alike than different. 



