12 The Great World's Farm 



to many another crop. Help is needed if they are to 

 bring their fruit to maturity, and this help the grower is, 

 generally speaking, quite unable to give; that is to say, 

 he may be able to give it here and there in a few instances, 

 but he would be powerless in an orchard, and would not 

 be able to afford the time necessary to do the delicate 

 work required in a single strawberry bed. Again, there- 

 fore, he must look to nature's laborers for assistance. 



Take the following example, for instance: In his 

 garden at Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, Mr. Belt, the 

 naturalist, sowed some scarlet-runner beans. The soil 

 was good, and the climate was favorable to bean life, and 

 the scarlet-runners grew and flourished, and finally blos- 

 somed abundantly. 



But it was finally! for here their career ended. They 

 did not produce a single bean among them, simply because 

 the right laborers were not at hand to give the requisite 

 help. 



The garden in which the beans grew had been recently 

 taken from the forest, by which it was still surrounded; 

 and that the laborers in this part of the farm v/ere not idle 

 was quite evident from the abundant luxuriance of the 

 vegetation. But it was tropical vegetation, and as it did 

 not include scarlet-runners, these were in the position of 

 foreigners, whose appeals for assistance were not under- 

 stood. It was in vain they put forth the bright flowers, 

 which were well-known signals in their native land, and 

 would there have brought them the helpers they needed — 

 no one noticed them. They were made welcome to the 

 soil, the rain, and the sunshine, and then they were left 

 to themselves and their master, with the result already 

 mentioned — no fruit! 



