248 PLANT LIFE 



out from the parent plant with the scantiest 

 supplies of ready-made nutriment. Hence, 

 on germination, they must quickly begin to 

 make their own living. 



Both methods have proved successful in 

 different lines. The advantage of small seeds 

 lies in the number of offspring produced, 

 and in the ease with which their dispersal is 

 ensured. Of course, it is inevitably accom- 

 panied by great mortality a waste in so far 

 as the individuals are concerned, but by no 

 means necessarily so from the point of view 

 of the race. 



Parasites generally (though not invariably) 

 produce huge quantities of small seeds. The 

 profitable result is sufficiently obvious, for 

 the individual chances of success cannot, at 

 best, be very great a species that relied on few 

 seeds would, in the majority of cases, be placed 

 at a disadvantage, inasmuch as the conditions 

 of successful development can only be seldom 

 realised. Every unsuccessful individual would 

 naturally be exterminated, and thus, with a 

 scanty progeny the race itself might easily 

 die out. Moreover, the advantage of big 

 seeds is less in the case of a parasite than in 

 that of ordinary plants, because if a seed 

 secures a lodgment enabling the embryo to 

 attack a suitable host, nutrition in abundance 

 is ready to hand. But for those that fail 

 to reach a host, no stock of nutrition, however 

 great, would be of any real avail. 



It matters little in what direction we cast 



