326 THE WORLD OF LIFE 



serviceable to him in a thousand ways which are totally j|M netl 



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removed from any use made of them by the lower animals. 



Few of these qualities seem essential to themselves as 

 vegetable growths. They might have been much smaller, 

 which would have greatly reduced their uses ; or so much 

 harder as to be almost unworkable ; or so liable to fracture 

 as to be dangerous ; or subject to rapid decay by the action 

 of air, or of water, or of sunshine, so as to be suitable for 

 temporary purposes only. With any of these defects they 

 might have served the purposes of the animal world quite 

 as well as they do now ; and their actual properties, all 

 varying about a mean value, which serves the infinitely 

 varied purposes to which we daily and hourly apply them, 

 may certainly be adduced as an indication that they were 

 endowed with such properties in view of the coming race 

 which could alone utilise them, and to whose needs they 

 minister in such an infinite variety of ways. 



As one example of what such a different quality of 

 timber as above indicated might mean let us remember that 

 from before the dawn of history down to about the middle 

 of the last century every ship in the world was built of 

 wood. Had no wood existed suitable for sea-going vessels, 

 the whole course of history, and perhaps of civilisation, 

 would have been different. Without ships the Mediterranean 

 would have been almost as impassable as was the Atlantic. 

 America would be still unknown, as well as Australia and 

 possibly South Africa ; and the whole world would be for 

 us smaller than in the days before Columbus. And all this 

 might have happened had the nature of vegetable growth, 

 while differing little in external form and equally well 

 adapted for unintelligent animal life, not possessed those 

 special qualities which fitted it for ministering to the varied 

 needs of intellectual, inventive, and ever advancing man. 



But, even with the whole vegetable world in its outward 

 aspect and mechanical properties exactly as it is now, there 

 are still a thousand ways in which it ministers to the needs 

 of our ever-growing civilisation, which have little or no 

 relation to the animal world which grew up in dependence 

 on it. Leaving out of consideration the vast number of 

 fruits, and cereals, and vegetables which supply him with 



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