PLANTS IN RELATIOX TO MAX nr>i 



thousand ways which arc totally removed from any use made 

 of them by the lower animals. 



Few of these qualities seem essential to themsclvos as vege- 

 table growths. They might have been much smaller, which 

 would have greatly reduced their uses; or so much harder as 

 to be almost unworkable; or so liable to fracture as to ho 

 dangerous; or subject to rapid decay by the action of air, or 

 of water, or of sunshine, so as to be suitable for temjuirarv 

 purposes only. With any of these defects they miirht have 

 served the purposes of the animal world (piite as well as they 

 do now; and their actual properties, all varyinir alxuit a mean 

 value, which serves the infinitely varied purposes to which we 

 daily and hourly apply them, may certainly be adducc<l as an 

 indication that they were endowed with such properties in 

 view of the coming race wdiich could alone utilise them, and 

 to whose needs they minister in such an infinite variety of 

 ways. 



As one example of what such a different quality of tind)er 

 as above indicated might mean let us remember that from bo- 

 fore the dawn of history down to about the middle of the last 

 century every ship in the world was built of wood. lla<l no 

 wood existed suitable for sea-going vessels, the whole course of 

 history, and perhaps of civilisation, would have been dilTerent. 

 Without ships the Mediterranean would have been almost as 

 impassable as was the Atlantic. America would be still un- 

 known, as well as Australia and possibly S..iitli Africa; and 

 the whole world would be for us smaller than in ilie days be- 

 fore Columbus. And all this might have happened had tlie 

 nature of vegetable growth, while dift'ering little in external 

 form and equally well adapted for unintelligent animal life, 

 not possessed those special qtuditics which fitted it for minis- 

 tering to the varied needs of intellectual, inventive, and ever 

 advancing man. 



But, even with the whole vegetable world in \\< (Uitwanl 

 aspect and mechanical properties exactly as it is now, there 

 are still a thousand wavs in which it ministers to tlie needs 



