Part 34

“It is better to help another than to do poor work alone, dears,” Mother Nature whispers, as she lays them to rest.

Then she visits all the weak plants, and all those in poor soil or in too much light or too much shade, and lays them to rest. Their materials go to nourish the strong plants, who are doing good work in the world and growing in beauty. Not all the plants that live to blossom are good alike. Some are better than others, but Mother Nature lets them grow if they are strong enough and can find food. At last the blooming comes. The flowers do their best. The strong ones make large, bright flowers full of color and full of sweetness. Mother Nature smiles at them and is pleased. The weaker flowers do their best; they are not so bright nor so large. Mother Nature smiles at them, for she loves them, too, and she will tell them what to do. The bees come and fly to the brighter flowers; they have rich, abundant pollen and rich nectar. The bees know this; they do not care so much for the duller, smaller flowers.

When the bees do not come, Mother Nature whispers to the little flowers, “Never mind, dears, there is work for you to do.” So they are happy, though their ovules get no pollen and they set no seeds. They are happy to do the work dear Mother Nature has for them to do.

The strong flowers set their seeds; they are strong, and they have been well fertilized. The weak flowers set few seeds; they are not strong to make many seeds, and they have not been well fertilized. So year by year and century by century Mother Nature watches her plants and encourages the strong to grow and helps the weak to find other work.

And this is why the flowers are so bright.

Mother Nature selects those that are to grow and blossom and sends the rest to help them. This is what we call natural selection, and this is what makes the earth so beautiful. Only the best continue to grow; the others are glad to help them.

HOW MOTHER NATURE MAKES NEW FLOWERS.

Once upon a time there lived a little plant in a marshy place. We will call it Primus, not because that was the very first form of the plant, for it was not, but because that was its form when we first saw it.

It had five small yellow petals, five small stamens, and an ovary.

When its seeds were ripe, along came a great wind and blew them away from the marsh upon the dry land at the edge.

Poor little seeds, they were out of their familiar wet marsh and they could not grow. But they did their best. Some of them managed to sprout, but soon they found the earth too dry and the sun too hot; so they said, “We will turn to other work; we will help the other plants and not try to grow ourselves.”

So they changed into gases and minerals and other substances. But a few of the seeds continued to grow.

They blossomed and bore seeds, but they were not just like the plants in the marsh. Mother Nature had helped them get a tougher skin and taught them how to shut tightly their pores in dry weather, so that the water within them could not escape.

You see, they were already different from their parents, though you might not have noticed it if you had seen them, the difference was so slight. The seeds of these new plants sprouted the next season. They did not have a hard time to grow. They knew just what to do, and the best and strongest of them grew a few hairs to help cover up the pores, so the water would not go out too fast.

It happened to be a very hot, dry season, and all the plants but these hairy ones stopped growing. They changed into gases and minerals and other substances to help the other plants. The hairy people got through the dry season very well. They set a good many seeds, and these seeds sprouted. The new plants remembered about the hairs and had plenty of them. Some were covered all over with a soft down.

And it was well they were, for it was a very hot, dry season, and all but the downy ones stopped growing and changed into minerals and gases and other substances to help the others. The seeds of the downy plants blew far over the dry land, far away from the marsh; but they had learned to live in the dry soil, and if you had found these downy people, you would hardly have known they were descended from the smooth, juicy, large-leaved marsh plants. Their stems were hard and tough and their leaves stiff and small. We can no longer call them Primus, they are so changed.

Let us call them Secundus. Secundus had small yellow flowers, like the marsh plants it was descended from. But one day some of the seeds of Secundus blew into the edge of a wood where the soil was rich and the air damp. This just suited the Secundus seeds, and they grew into very thrifty plants indeed. They had so much sap and grew so luxuriantly that their petals were twice as large as was usual with Secundus petals. These fine showy flowers also possessed a great deal of nectar, they had so much sap. Of course the bees came to them, and they were well fertilized. They set many seeds. The next year these strong seeds were able to grow even when their neighbors were not, and the plants that came from these seeds also had large showy flowers.

These stronger plants held their own, you may be sure, and at last there was more of them than of the small-flowered plants. It was well for them this was so, for there came several bad seasons when nothing was just right for these plants. It was cold and stormy, and only the very strongest lived through it. But they managed to survive, and their flowers were large and showy.

All the weaker plants with smaller flowers were killed out, and only these large-flowered ones remained. They were very different from their ancestors the marsh plants, and we shall have to call them Tertius.

One day some of the seeds of Tertius were blown into a new kind of soil; they sucked up the juices of this new soil, and lo! some of their flowers opened white instead of yellow. It so happened that the white-flowered plants were stronger than the others. The bees liked them, too; for, being so strong and full of sap, they made plenty of honey. So these white-flowered ones increased in numbers very greatly. At last only the white ones could be found; the yellow ones had gradually given way before them until no yellow ones were left.

So we will call the white-flowered people Quartus.

Quartus lived a long time, each year bearing seeds, the strongest and best of which grew up and bore flowers.

One day some of Quartus’ seeds were blown into a hot, sandy place; this almost killed them, but some of them managed to grow.

Their leaves were smaller and stiffer than ever before, but they had a great many of them, and their flowers were large and white. They grew to like the sandy soil, and what they got from it changed their sap in some way so their petals were delicately tinged with pink. The bees liked these pink flowers; perhaps their honey was a little richer; perhaps they could see them better. However that may be, the bees almost deserted the white-blossomed plants and visited the pink ones. So the white flowers set few seeds and the pink flowers many. When the seeds sprouted, the pink ones were the strongest, because in their change of color there was somehow added a change in strength; they were stronger than the white flowers. They grew fast and took the materials from the earth and the air; and when the white flowers saw this, they said, “It is their turn now,” so they changed into gases and minerals and other things and helped the pink flowers to grow.

Soon there were no more white flowers to be seen; they had stopped growing, and only the pink ones kept on, so we shall have to call these pink flowers Quintus.

But a great danger threatened Quintus. Cows and goats and sheep bit off their leaves. They ate so much of them that many plants were killed outright. Only the stiffest and hardest were left to blossom and set seed. The seeds of these plants with the stiff leaves and stems grew into other stiff-stemmed and stiff-leaved plants. The cattle browsed the tenderest of these and again left the stiffest. This went on for many years, the plants growing stiffer and harder each year. Some of them got so stiff and hard that they threw out prickles all over their stems.

These prickly ones were not eaten, and in time you would have found them grown into woody bushes with prickly stems.

We shall have to call these Sextus.