CHAPTER IX 
How Nature Created the First Plants 
Away back in the beginning of the world there were 
no bees nor humming-birds; there were only cockroaches 
and locusts, crawling insects that fed upon dead leaves 
and leafy plants, or swam in the water and lived upon the 
water-bugs. It took Nature millions of years, perhaps, 
to create a plant that could produce honey for the bee, 
and until the pollen flowers came there were no bees, no 
flies nor beetles, no moths, ants nor wasps. 
You see, Nature did not create the rose all in one 
minute; she did not just snap her fingers and say, “Rose, 
come up!”—and the rose bush sprang up shining with 
flowers. Millions of years ago Nature began to create 
the rose bush, and when she began she was not at all 
sure how it was going to turn out. She took what ma¬ 
terials she had and with skillful fingers she shaped a 
simple green planfc which bore no flowers, and so, of 
course, no seeds. The egg-cell and the sperm-cell were 
exposed loosely on the leaves, as they are to-day on 
the humbler plants, such as the ferns and mosses. 
Nature watched this plant for a million years, and she 
was not satisfied with it. She said to herself, 
“H’m, that is a clumsy way for my rose-plant to bear 
little ones; I can think of a better way than that!” 
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