THE RUSH FOR THE SUN 79 



for safety, the umbel-bearing plants of which this is 

 the commonest representative press up very efficiently 

 for their brief annual revel in the sun. The multi- 

 plicity of their species, one of the chief bewilderments 

 of the young botanist, shows how well the system has 

 paid for millions and millions of generations. 



Everything, from the lordliest tree to the humblest 

 creeping plant (during its little period of flowering), 

 presses heavenward that is, straight for the zenith. 

 This though the sun is scarcely ever in that quarter of 

 the sky, and only for an hour or two in the whole 

 middle month of the year. The household plant 

 usually, though not always, strives to get out of the 

 nearest window. We can understand that as a groping 

 after light which is the essential stimulant of its green 

 laboratory, but the attitude of the tree in the plain 

 seems more like a spiritual aspiration a desire to get, 

 by the most direct way, out of this wicked world and 

 into a better. It is not so, however. The grass and 

 the fool's-parsley and the trees are tiptoeing to look 

 over one another's heads at the sun as he wanders 

 round the horizon ; fighting against the overshadowing 

 of a neighbour that would cut off any ray, however 

 early or however late ; striving for the dominance that 

 will enable the winner to spread his branches right 

 over the sky-space of the loser, kill him, and get his 

 root-area as well. Some are more cruel and selfish (in 

 their probably blind way) than others ; some less eager 

 for battle, and with a more gentle or cunning way of 

 getting their own. The snowdrop and the crocus 

 avoid fuss and bitterness by coming very early. There 

 is very little fighting for the sun of January and 

 February, which, for the sake of peace, they consider 



