WATER-PLANTS AS AS LAND-WINNERS. 
ALBERT HENRY PAWSON, F.L.S., 
Farnley, Leeds. 
THE struggle for life which seems to be the ruling power of the 
animal and vegetable world, to which our biologists refer all 
the modifications and varieties of the objects of their study, is 
not confined to organic things alone. The solid crust of the 
earth is engaged in like warfare; land and water are in per- 
petual conflict. This is a true war of the Titans: it is like 
a battle among the gods. All the four elements are drawn into 
the struggle. Fire takes the side of the Land, and Air joins 
itself to Water ; but these last are in their nature fickle and 
uncertain, and they do not always prove themselves trustworthy 
allies. The sea wastes the shores and crumbles the cliffs on one 
coast, at another point he is driven back by shoals and sand- 
banks. Rains and frost and wind wear down the mountains, 
but the routed battalions rally again on the lower ground, filling 
up lakes and forming deltas. In one place the land sinks, in 
another it is thrown up. So the war rages unceasingly with 
varying fortunes, 
Neither are the citizens of the animal and vegetable kingdom 
altogether neutral in this strife. It is the land which really 
nourishes all of them, and they have thrown in their lot with it, 
and in building up coral islands and in filling up swamps and 
fens they greatly further the cause which they have espoused. 
The old proverb, ‘It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good,’ 
will serve us in this case also. In the erosion and redistribution 
of the land which is continually taking place it must be allowed 
that the balance of advantage lies with man. If we lose some- 
thing on one shore line we gain it on another, and in the rich 
deltas about the mouths of our rivers and in our fertile valleys 
and deep alluvial plains we find our chief wealth. It is certainly 
to our profit that the hard rocks are ground up into cornfields, 
that the soil is removed from bleak heights where it will not 
reward the tillage and that it is spread out in the warmth of 
a lower level, that the whole country is being flattened, however 
gradually, for the plough. 
It is to the part which plants play in increasing the land 
surface that I wish to refer—plants which grow everywhere in_ 
- Our own country and which come under our own observation, 
as Reeds, Sedges, ee and floating water-plants. There are 
ts August 1899. oe P 
