THE DAISY’S WARFARE 3 
struggles that have taken place between man and 
man; you get excited about noted warriors, and 
heroes! and terrible tyrants, but no greater battle 
was ever fought by man than is being silently waged 
by the daisy every day of its existence, and probably 
no man ever was so determined to win a fight, or so 
unscrupulous in his methods, as this seemingly 
modest flower. When you know the ways of plants, 
as I hope I may help you to know them, you will 
realize that there is a strange kinship between man 
and the lowliest member of the vegetable kingdom ; 
that, indeed, every living creature in common with 
man is engaged in the quest for habitation, food, and 
clothing. Nay, more than this, you will some day 
come to understand that the life which actuates a 
plant or an animal is the same life which manifests 
itself in a man, the difference between man and 
lowlier forms of life being purely a matter of 
organization. It is because it is the same life that 
moves man and animal and plant that both animals 
and plants are so seemingly human in their ways. 
The ways of plants and animals, however, are human 
only up to a certain point; they fall short of the 
morality and, religion for which man is so con- 
spicuous. 
Having made mention of the daisy in a rather 
pointed fashion, I shall probably have whetted your 
appetites for its story, and I feel I must at once 
justify the statements I have made about this plant. 
The common daisy, known also as the “ gowan,” 
and dignified by the Latin name Bells perennis, is 
what is known as a “compound” flower. It is 
called ‘‘compound”’ beeause what seems to be a 
