Vices of Plants Ill 
of the care given during infancy, the cost of transportation, 
plus the nurseryman’s modest profit, a plant repudiates its 
debt to the past, and disappears from pure sloth. Of course 
it is easier to die than to live, sometimes. We all know, 
when beset with the thorns of life, how cool and inviting the 
ground is six feet down; but we are trained to the moral 
obligation to live, and live we do, in the face of fire, flood 
and disaster of every sort, if we are plucky and Atropos keeps 
her shears in her pocket. As a product of commercial enter- 
prise plants have no right to shirk duty and go into bank- 
ruptcy; or worse, to disappear altogether. Do they commit 
suicide, or abscond, for they take every available asset with 
them? To what refuge do they flee? Yes, I know my 
remarks are growing pointed, and I mean to go still further 
and name as a chief offender the Lilium auratum, long recog- 
nized as a garden absconder, and lovely pale pink Pyrethrum 
bore it company. Among the idle loafers who ate and drank 
heartily at my table two summers ago and made no return 
were Lilium candidum—true they were planted in a place 
too wet and shady, but what of that?—Funkia subcordata, 
Hydrangea paniculata, only recently turned into a slothful 
vagabond, tritoma, Japanese iris, Stachys lantana, lusty look- 
ing Canterbury bells, two-year-old pentstemons and gerar- 
dias—all went out on a strike, and their labor had to be 
done by overworked annuals. Even a wee abortive blossom 
would have shown a good intention. True it was a cold 
summer, but sometimes one has to work to keep warm. 
Given a worm at its root—which is a plant’s heart—a lawful 
disease, the destroying hand of Fate in the form of drought, 
or ripe old age, it is right that a plant shall die—let it first 
discharge its debt of bloom to the race; but no word of exten- 
uation can be said of the plant that sulks and won’t work. 
For this cause came it into the world. 
