134 THE HUMAN SIDE OF PLANTS 
nutriment in the seed or bulb. Some of these lega- 
cies are small, others are large; in other words some 
plants, just as men, carry a small life insurance, 
others carry a large one. Most nuts, acorns, beans, 
peas, and especially large fruits, like the cocoanut, 
are exceedingly rich in food material, and may be 
said to have received a large legacy from the par- 
ent plant. On the other hand, such plants as the 
mustards, violets, broom-rapes, poppies, verbenas, 
phlox, orchids, and ladies’-tresses, are left with such 
a small quantity of nutriment that their babies must 
go to work early and develop chlorophyll in order 
to produce food and clothing for themselves. Like 
the child of the poor compared to the child of the 
rich: one must work for every penny it gets, the 
other has all its wants supplied. 
Man has various kinds of insurance policies— 
life, accident, health, and even those against old 
age and decreptitude; the same is true of many 
plants. 
One of their best known methods of insurance 
is by storing away food-material in the basement, or 
underground bank; that is, in bulbs and roots. 
These bulbs are not really all roots, but some parts 
of them are buds from which new plants will spring 
when given a suitable opportunity. Among bulb- 
ous plants are tulips, lilies, dahlias, and many com- 
