CHAPTER SIX. 



SCATTERING THE SPORES 



1. The Probkm of Scattering Offspring. Human 

 parents have a way of wanting to keep their children at 

 home and to have them settle near by. But if there are 

 ten children in the family and there are only two hundred 

 acres of land, it is clear that each child must be content 

 with twenty acres or must crowd out some neighbor. 

 Now the problem of these plants that produce so many 

 spores is even more difficult. If all the spores produced 

 by one fungus of almost any kind were to fall right 

 down and germinate on the spot, the crowding would be 

 such that none could thrive. Furthermore, the food at 

 one spot suitable for a given species is always limited. 

 By the time the spores appear the parent plant may have 

 itself exhausted the food. Evidently the species will have 

 a much better chance to keep going if these spores are 

 scattered far and wide. It is sure that most of them will 

 fall at points where they can never succeed, but out of 

 the many there is a chance that some will find favorable 

 places. Wide scattering gives an opportunity to try out 

 the surroundmgs. Since a single spore cannot try first 

 one locality and then another, as an animal can, this 

 scattering of the offspring is the next best way of getting 

 the members of a species into favorable places. 



2. Another Problem. There is another side to this 

 question of scattering. If, for example, there is an injured 

 fish in the water of a pond, and a few spores of the fish 



33 



