STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 



There seems to be a law of mutual dependence among 

 the vegetable tribes, each one ministering to the wants of 

 the others. Thus the shelter afforded by the larger trees 

 to the smaller shrubs and herbs is repaid again to them by 

 the nourishment that the decaying leaves and stems of these 

 latter afford, and by the warmth that they yield to their 

 roots in covering the ground from the winter cold, thus 

 protecting them from injury. Further than this, it is very 

 probable that they appropriate to their own use qualities 

 in the soil or in the air that might prove injurious to the 

 healthy growth of the larger vegetables. That which is 

 taken up by one race of plants is often rejected by others. 

 Yet so beautiful is the arrangement of God's economy in the 

 vegetable world that something gathers up all fragments 

 and nothing is lost nay, not the minutest particle runs to 

 waste. The farmer practically acknowledges the principle 

 that one kind of vegetable feeds upon that which another 

 rejects, when he adopts a certain routine in cropping his 

 land, for he knows that if he planted grain in constant 

 succession the soil would soon cease to yield its increase, 

 because it would have ceased to afford the food necessary 

 for perfecting the grain; but he sows wheat after roots, as 

 potatoes, turnips and beets, or after pulse, as pease, beans 

 or vetches, for these have taken only certain constituents 

 of the soil, leaving those portions on which the cereals 

 feed unappropriated. Thus silently, unconsciously, and 

 mysteriously do God's creatures administer to one another, 

 working out the will of their Great Creator and obeying His 

 laws while following the instincts of their several natures. 



We might follow this inviting subject to a greater length 

 than our limits will admit, but it is time that we dismiss the 

 lovely little Twinflower, hoping that it may sometimes 

 win an admiring glance from readers who may be 



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