RIVALRY OF PLANTS 151 



Our alfalfa, lettuce, and apples, like our 

 horses, our cows, our dogs, have found in man 

 a friend stronger than the strongest of their 

 enemies. 



j-So their welfare now is measured by the use- 

 fulness of service they can render in repayment 

 for man's care. 



There is a common snowball in my yard which 

 advertises alone to me. 



In the woods around there are other snow- 

 balls of the same family — wild snowballs — ^into 

 whose life history man, as a part of environment, 

 has never come, except perhaps to destroy. 



The w^ild snowball, with only a fringe of blos- 

 soms, and a mass of egg nests and pollen inside 

 the fringe, is still advertising to the bee. 



But the snowball in my yard has responded to 

 my care and the care of those who went before 

 me, till its stamens and pastils, as if seeing their 

 needlessness, have turned to petals — till its eggs 

 have grown sterile, even should an insect come. 

 ^ And so, with every snowball which is grown 

 for the beauty of its flowers — cultivation has re- 

 lieved it of the need for reproduction, and what 

 once was but a fringe of flowers has been trans- 

 formed into a solid mass of blossoms. 



Just as a mother cat can make a dumb appeal 

 for the protection or the sustenance of her 



