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any particular efforts should be made to preserve our wild flowers. 
Another reason for the destruction of numberless native plants 
is the constant improvement of our city by cultivating wild 
lands around it, clearing them, draining them, or building on 
them. This, of course, cannot be helped, as an increase in popu- 
lation demands the extension of city limits. 
There is every reason that our native plants should be saved. 
Every city takes pride in having its own local flora, and ours 
will soon disappear if care is not taken. It is advisable, when 
certain species become scarce, to transplant them to other places 
where they may be kept without fear of injury; but some flowers 
like the arbutus do not bear transplanting, and it is very difficult 
to transplant others. We should, therefore, a especially to 
leave such flowers to grow and reproduce their . Then again, 
our wild flowers are so beautiful that it seems a to have them 
destroyed, when they should be increasing in number every day. 
When we consider the struggle for existence which every plant 
undergoes, we are willing to save them if only through gratitude, 
human sympathy and kindness. Plants, as well as animals, have 
life. As far as scientists know, ‘Life is the impulse to exist 
with the power of development from assimilation.”” No scientist 
can define life. The basis of life is protoplasm, without which 
no living thing can exist. ‘‘Plants are manufactories from which 
life is gained by inert material. Chlorophyll is a modification 
of protoplasm, and leaves, under sunlight, manufacture that life- 
giving energy that we, as animals, eat and assimilate.” It is 
therefore evident that plants came before animals, and that the 
latter are dependent upon plants for food. We should therefore 
be grateful to plants, which are a means for our very existence. 
As regards our sympathy and kindness we have only to kno 
what a plant endures in life, and our sympathy will iy 
be given to it. A seed isa miniature plant. If a seed is left in 
the ground, and has the proper conditions for growth, which are 
warmth and moisture, it awakens from its dormant state, and 
becomes active in pushing forth root and stem 
The root gives the plant a firm hold in the ground. A certain 
zone is covered with minute root-hairs, which take in from the 
