1 62 The Great World's Farm 



race is to continue, it must as a rule be able to perfect its 

 seed, otherwise it will merely thrive for a time, longer or 

 shorter, according as it is an annual or a perennial, and 

 then it will perish without descendants. 



But in very many cases the plant, like Mr. Belt's scar- 

 let-runners already mentioned, is quite unable to perfect 

 seed without the help of what we may call nature's under- 

 gardeners. The plant does much for its offspring; it col- 

 lects and stores food, it drains itself of its own life-juices 

 for their benefit, but it cannot always do everything; and 

 if these under-gardeners were banished from the earth, 

 some plants would speedily vanish also. 



Both blossoming and fruit-bearing are processes more 

 or less exhausting to the plant, for neither flowers nor 

 fruits do much, though they do something, towards feed- 

 ing themselves. Annuals blossom and bear fruit once and 

 then die entirely, roots and all, their leaves and stems 

 being drained of nourishment by the end of the season. 

 Others, perennials, die down, but their roots remain alive; 

 and others again, merely shed their exhausted leaves, and 

 grow fresh ones, for several or many seasons in succes- 

 sion. Others again, take more than one season to store 

 food before they venture upon the expense of having blos- 

 soms at all; and others take many years to prepare for 

 this great effort, and when it is at last accomplished, the 

 great end of their lives, they die of mere exhaustion. 



The food of blossom and fruit is, as has been said, 

 very generally accumulated in the leaves and stems of the 

 plant; but sometimes the root serves as the main store- 

 house. The turnip, for instance, like other biennials, 

 spends the first year of its life in doing nothing but gather 

 a store of food by means of its roots and its tuft of leaves. 



