lating action of the chlorophyll in leaves. Hence the leaves of the herbaceous plants in our woods and forests are often much divided, as in many species of Umbelliferæ, Ferns, etc.; or else plants growing under such circumstances have to be humbleminded, put forth few leaves, and be content with a little. In the vegetable kingdom, therefore, Lazarus can only exist by the crumbs which fall from the rich man's table! Grim vengeance, however, is often taken. Underneath every Oak, Beech, and Elm, where the abounding foliage of the individual tree prevents herbaceous growth, the progeny of the same tree are sprouting, trying to grow, hustling and jostling each other, dying year after year; for only one plant can eventually take the place of the parent-tree, even after waiting perhaps half a thousand of years! The Pines-oldest, doubtless, of all exogenous woody trees are more tyrannous still. Their needle-shaped leaves, abounding in silica, fall to the ground, and mat it so that scarcely a Lichen or Moss can find sufficient foothold for its abidingplace. No other plants so effectively carry out this dog-in-the-manger policy. Yet in long-cultivated England we practically know comparatively nothing of the greediness of the vegetable kingdom. It is seen in its intensest form in tropical regions, where the stimulating action of the solar light and heat (assisted by an abundant In equatorial forests, moisture) is at its maximum. especially those of ancient standing, the bush-ropes strangle, the parasites bleed, and the epiphytes hang on for a living. Travellers have to hew their way through the dense, dark, tough, selfish mass of vegetation, just as miners have to force a passage through the living rock; but armchair travellers cannot realise sufficiently vividly the actual state of things. Still, even in our own mother-country, we are not without numerous members of the British flora which live by the same devices as their tropical brethren. Not a few of them have had their habits ingeniously directed to serve our own purposes; but there are few people who train the Honeysuckle, Ivy, Virginia Creeper, and Clematis to grow on the walls of their houses, who are aware of the numerous biological and physiographical circumstances, extending and accumulating during geological ages, which have enabled these plants to serve such æsthetic ends! To the sympathetic botanist there is something touching in the manner with which certain plants accept their fate. The gorgeous-flowered Rhododendrons of the Himalayas have been trained by long æons to be able to exist under umbrageous arboreal foliage, and we have introduced them into our shrubberies because of this (to us) "valuable habit." Most of the shrubs and plants we utilise in our gardens on account of their growing in the shade, have learned the lessons of their specific lives in the same school of experience. No genuine RUFFLE FIG. 15.-Butcher's Broom (Ruscus aculeatus), with flattened branches or cladodes doing duty for true leaves. botanist can regard that remarkable and unique British plant, the Butcher's Broom (Ruscus aculeatus), It is the only with other than intense interest. species of woody monocotyledonous plant we have in England-the only representative of the woody.. stemmed Palms, etc., of the tropics-submissively growing beneath the shade of trees which came into existence ages after its own family had occupied the proud position of aristocrats in the vegetable world. What a story of quiet suffering and struggling with these plutocratic newcomers does the fact that the Butcher's Broom has no leaves, but only cladodes, tell us! Leaves with it have long since disappeared. Profitable as they usually are, the plant could not make ends meet; and so the branches flattened themselves, became covered with stomata (or carbonfeeding mouths), and performed, and do still perform, all the functions of true leaves. Edwin Waugh, the well-known Lancashire poet, expresses a great botanical truth, although in the broadest vernacular, in his lines "For Daisies liven weel Wheer' Tulips connot grow." They Of those lower members of the vegetable world which, like Uriah Heep, prefer to be humble—such as Mosses and Lichens-we cannot say much. never appear to have "had their day," like other great orders of plants. The existing Club-mosses once grew to the magnitude of forest trees, as Lepidodendron, Sigillaria, etc.; even the diminutive Horsetails of our waste grounds, damp woods, and ditch-sides, in Carboniferous times acquired both woody growth and a height that would overtop most modern British trees. Grasses still grow to tree height in tropical regions, as witness the Bamboos; and the Ferns, under such favourable circumstances as New Zealand and other places afford, have managed to retain their arboreal supremacy, although elsewhere they have had to submit to fate and descend to the level of humble plants—just as we find many "Howards," "Talbots," "Goodwins," etc., now working among our ordinary population for less than a pound a week! Humboldt thought that in primeval times Lichens might have had arboreal dimensions and magnitude, and that geologists would ultimately find them. But this prophecy of nearly half a century ago has not been realised. Perhaps the Lichens are taking it out in time instead of size, for no plants, not even the Californian "big trees," extend through a longer existence than these "gray patches" on the rocks of our hills and mountains. As to the Mosses, nobody has yet expected they would find primeval specimens 50 feet high-small in comparison with Palæozoic Horsetails. The extraordinary geographical distribution of even individual species of Mosses may be regarded as quite sufficient, and that mere individual bigness is not worth striving for in the face of such a fact. Individual growth is of the first importance; for |