The Plant's Response 



175 



But let us go back to our cherry-tree and our robin. 

 When it comes to priority of claim it is probable that the 

 title of the robin far outruns, and would, if fairly present- 

 ed, hold in any court in Christendom. Cherries, in the 

 first place, are in response to the keen eyes and fairly 

 keen taste of birds. Wild cherries there are in abun- 

 dance; made for robins; but the robin meanwhile has 

 played his own part in the making of them. There, my 

 friends, is where all our reasoning hitherto has failed us. 

 We have failed to realize the part that robins and men 

 play in their own destinies ; content in the assertion that 

 "in the beginning God created the heavens and the 

 earth," we have failed to perceive that in his infinite 

 wisdom robins and men are alike co-workers together 

 with him in the sublime emprise, that in the result, as 

 hitherto revealed, all things organic are in greater or less 

 degree participant. 



The storage of a minute modicum of starch or sugar 

 has from the beginning been of advantage to the germin- 

 ating plantlet which is of course the essential part of the 

 seed; but such store of starch or sugar is also a prime 

 element in the food of animals. These accordingly early 

 learned to feed upon vegetable seed or fruit, and in so 

 doing lent their aid to the dispersal of plants over the 

 habitable earth. Now plants are great expansionists. 

 Those whose seeds spring in the greatest number of lo- 

 calities are more likely to persist. Hence the consump- 

 tion of the plant-fruit by animals is an advantage, pro- 

 vided only the germinating power of the seed survive. 

 The food of the robin is therefore at once a response of 

 the plant to a condition ; a bit of strategy on the chess- 



