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former cultivated plants—a few stalks of rye, wheat and oats. 
Free nature was at work winning back from man territory taken 
from her. 
At the Russian front an additional factor presented itself: 
the bringing in of plants foreign to the territory before the war. 
(For the exact study of this peculiarity we have to thank the 
naturalist Kupffer of Riga.) There, in the neighbourhood of the 
former Russian camps and places where there had been enclo- 
sures for horses were to be found a large number of plants whose 
home is in the southern steppes of Russia: the beautiful Orien- 
tal Larkspur (Delphinium orientale), the catchfly (Silene Otites) 
and many others. How did these growths come to the Baltic? 
The troops got the fodder for their horses from the interior of 
Russia. Numerous seeds of weeds were brought along and 
thrown away as refuse, or fell in the unloading. They then 
sprang up. In most cases they did not appear in succeeding 
years, as, in the unaccustomed climate, the seeds did not ripen. 
Conspicuous also was the quantity of sunflower appearing in 
the vicinity of the Russian positions. The sunflower is grown 
only occasionally in gardens in the Baltic provinces. It is not 
found wild or in extensive culture at all. In order to explain its 
appearance during the war, it is only necessary to bear in mind 
the habit of most Russians of chewing sunflower seeds. The 
soldiers always had their pockets full of them. How often it 
must have happened that seeds fell out and germinated. The 
red poppy, also not at home in Baltic regions, was brought 
_ thither, but this time by German soldiers, who everywhere in 
front of their blockhouses dug little gardens and ornamented 
their temporary homes with flowers. Among other growths for- 
eign to the land they cultivated poppies, which spread from the 
gardens and became wild. 
These are only a few ikaaples One could observe similar 
phenomena in many other cases. But one thing had proved it- 
self everywhere: the creatures of nature can fight together to 
the point of mutual destruction, but nature herself is always 
creative, building up unceasingly. 
GERMAN UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE 
