The Plant's Response 



177 



cherries; man has carried the idea forward to meet his 

 larger mouth, and, better, his finer, more discriminating 

 taste. The birds were content with small cherries; men 

 love big cherries; to which the birds do not object. The 

 part played by man, accordingly, is not to make or un- 

 make cherries: but simply to forward a process already 

 under way. Dr. Geddes illustrates the matter thus: 

 "You have two dozen apples in your fruit-basket just 

 beginning to spoil. Each day you take the two best, 

 and at the end of a few days or of a week there are ten 

 rotten apples left. To a slight extent, it may be said, 

 you are responsible for the growing rottenness, for you 

 might have periodically selected the two worst, but the 

 rottenness was there; it not only arose, but increased 

 without you." Now this is true in the case of most of 

 the plants that have responded to man 's enticing, but not 

 of all, as we shall see. But in general it may be said 

 that in all the intercourse of plants with men as now 

 discussed, the plant has spoken first; has given the hint 

 and it has been the wondrous, the delightful duty of 

 human genius simply to elicit the fuller, more complete 

 response. 



The origin of the cultivated grasses is no doubt simi- 

 lar, although, in most cases, the association is so very 

 ancient that all trace of the original form and type is 

 lost. Thus wheat appears to have been much the same 

 as now as far back as the earliest records of humanity. 

 There is no wild wheat in the world. The original type 

 is lost. In the records of China wheat is described 2700 

 years B. C. as a gift of God to men ; its origin was lost 

 then. In the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs wheat appears 



