154 THE GREENWOOD TREE. 



that we can ever fully understand the varying forms and 

 habits of the vegetable kingdom. To most people, no 

 doubt, it sounds like pure metaphor to talk of an inter- 

 necine struggle between rooted beings which cannot budge 

 one inch from their places, nor fight with horns, hoofs, or 

 teeth, nor devour one another bodily, nor tread one 

 another down with ruthless footsteps. But that is only 

 because we habitually forget that competition is just as 

 really a struggle for life as open warfare. The men who 

 try against one another for a clerkship in the City, or a 

 post in a gang of builder's workmen, are just as surely 

 taking away bread and butter out of their fellows' mouths 

 for their own advantage, as if they fought for it openly 

 with fists or six-shooters. The white man who encloses 

 the hunting grounds of the Indian, and plants them with 

 corn, is just as surely dooming that Indian to death as if 

 he scalped or tomahawked him. And so too with the 

 unconscious warfare of plants. The daisy or the plantain 

 that spreads its rosette of leaves flat against the ground 

 is just as truly monopolizing a definite space of land as 

 the noble owner of a Highland deer forest. No blade 

 of grass can spring beneath the shadow of those tightly 

 pressed little mats of foliage ; no fragment of carbon, 

 no ray of sunshine can ever penetrate below that close 

 fence of living greenstuff. 



Plants, in fact, compete with one another all round 

 for everything they stand in need of. They compete for 

 their food carbonic acid. They compete for their 

 energy their fair share of sunlight. They compete for 

 water, and their foothold in the soil. They compete for 

 the favours of the insects that fertilize their flowers. 



