152 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



plane, where each entity has its own name, its family history 

 and its native country. They record a world-wide compulsory 

 emigration, and not infrequently the unwilling colonist has 

 died of homesickness; others adapt themselves to strange con- 

 ditions only after generations but they are never again the 

 same creatures. Not having evolved to the stage of locomo- 

 tion, the achievements of plant life are circumscribed to the 

 number, size, color and arrangement of leaf and flower. Some 

 have developed the talent of fragrance; some have the genius 

 of beautiful flower and fruit. Each one strives to manifest the 

 perfect type, though few reach perfection. The family is rep- 

 resented in youth and age, the young offsets or shoots spring- 

 ing up about the parent stock. Some have a desire for travel 

 and fling their seeds out upon the winds. Some families show 

 great inequalities of development, having branches that have 

 not progressed beyond the tiny herb, while other members 

 have aspired to the higher forms of shrubs. 



The orthodox have claimed that the earth and the fruits 

 thereof were made for man. But I came to a truer knowledge 

 one summer when, picking wild strawberries, I caught a 

 glimpse of this truth: that each manifestation in the plant or 

 animal world exists primarily for its own private evolutionary 

 purposes; but that since both men and strawberries are de- 

 rived from the same source, and equally obey the cosmic law 

 that no creation liveth or dieth unto itself, there is that fine 

 adaptation to each other, that fits the lower to serve the higher, 

 without making that service the ultimate end of its existence. 

 Its utility is merely a by-product of its life. It is the germinal 

 form of a larger phase, which we call cooperative brother- 

 hood, that vibrates through the whole universe. 



I have become so sensitive to the Spirit in my plants, that 

 at times when the garden is at its height, I am overwhelmed 

 with its fulness of life, and am often filled with a deep mel- 



