152 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
plane, where each entity has its own name, its family history 
and its native country. They record a world-wide compulsory 
emigration, and not infrequently the unwilling colonist has 
died of homesickness; others adapt themselves to strange con- 
ditions only after generations—but they are never again the 
same creatures. Not having evolved to the stage of locomo- 
tion, the achievements of plant life are circumscribed to the 
number, size, color and arrangement of leaf and flower. Some 
have developed the talent of fragrance; some have the genius 
of beautiful flower and fruit. Each one strives to manifest the 
perfect type, though few reach perfection. The family is rep- 
resented in youth and age, the young offsets or shoots spring- 
ing up about the parent stock. Some have a desire for travel 
and fling their seeds out upon the winds. Some families show 
great inequalities of development, having branches that have 
not progressed beyond the tiny herb, while other members 
have aspired to the higher forms of shrubs. 
The orthodox have claimed that the earth and the fruits 
thereof were made for man. But I came toa truer knowledge 
one summer when, picking wild strawberries, I caught a 
glimpse of this truth: that each manifestation in the plant or 
animal world exists primarily for its own private evolutionary 
purposes; but that since both men and strawberries are de- 
rived from the same source, and equally obey the cosmic law 
that no creation liveth or dieth unto itself, there is that fine 
adaptation to each other, that fits the lower to serve the higher, 
without making that service the ultimate end of its existence. 
Its utility is merely a by-product of its life. It is the germinal 
form of a larger phase, which we call codperative brother- 
hood, that vibrates through the whole universe. 
I have become so sensitive to the Spirit in my plants, that 
at times when the garden is at its height, I am overwhelmed 
with its fulness of life, and am often filled with a deep mel- 
