SOME PLANT BIOGRAPHIES. 199 



with all their vicissitudes. I propose, therefore, 

 in this chapter to give you brief sketches of one 

 or two such life-histories ; and I hope these few 

 hints may encourage you to find out many more 

 for yourself, by personal study of plants in their 

 native surroundings. 



" In their native surroundings," I say, since 

 all life is really, in Mr. Herbert Spencer's famous 



* phrase, " adaptation to the environment ; " and 



* therefore we can only understand and discover 

 the use and meaning of each part or organ by 

 watching the plant in its own home, and among 

 the general conditions by which it and its 

 ancestors have always been limited. It would 

 be impossible, for example, to see the use of 

 the thick outer covering of the coconut (from 

 which coconut matting is manufactured) if we 

 did not know that the coconut palm grows 

 naturally by the sea shore in tropical islands, 

 and frequently drops its fruits into the water 

 beneath it. The nuts are thus carried by the 

 waves and currents from islet to islet ; and 

 the coconut palm, which is a denizen of sea- 

 sand, owes to this curious method of water- 

 carriage its wide dispersion among the coral-reefs 

 of the Pacific. But a plant that is so dispersed 

 must needs make provision against wetting, 

 bruising, and sinking in the sea ; and since only 

 those coconuts would get dispersed over wide 

 spaces of water which happened to possess a 

 good coating of fibre, the existing plant has come 

 to produce the existing nut as we know it richly 

 stored with food for the young palm while it 

 makes its first steps among the barren rocks and 



