Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/243

Rh growing season. No one would care to say that a Rubus is less hardy than an Æsculus. They are not to be compared, and there the matter ends. If two species in the same genus have similar habits of growth, and one fails to bear the surrounding conditions while the other thrives, the case is very different, and it is more natural to seek the reason, for the answer, if it could be given, might be a blessing to every orchardist and gardener suffering from losses among his tender plants. And even here it may be that the explanation turns upon surroundings to which each plant has been subjected. We know that species migrate from the home of the parent as birds from the parental nest or the sheep from the fold. It is not difficult to believe that offspring from common stock in time develop progeny subjected to very unlike conditions. Under dissimilar circumstances they develop unlike tendencies; and when, after centuries, these new forms are again brought together through man's culture, while they may be outwardly the same, the one is tender while the other is not. It is a question of the resistive power which, whenever we reach for it, whether with the high-power lens or the chemist's test-tube, the result is much the same. This generation seeks after a sign, and it might do many worse things. It may be a long time before there will be a better test for hardiness than that which is applied when a plant is subjected to the actual conditions. At present there is no rule without innumerable exceptions, which not only "prove the rule," but prove that it is valueless. The Greenlander may easily fall a victim to smallpox, because, we say, his system has not been so situated as to develop the resistive power to this direful malady. The Northern man goes south and is stricken with a fever that does not cause death to those "to the manor born."

In the field we see the corn falls with the first hard frost, while the asters along the roadway hold their freshness and continue to blossom until early winter congeals the sap. Turn to the flower-garden, and we see many of our tender plants in the withered brownness of death, and by their side stands the Anterrhinum in the beauty of its pristine freshness, bearing its blossoms of every size from the minutest bud up to the full flower. The pelargonium has its dead branches intermingled with the living stems of the petunia. The moss-rose is lifeless upon the ground, while the prostrate verbena is fragrant with new blossoms. Snows come and go long after the Indian summer has been succeeded by the chill November days, and the pansies smile from among frosty fallen leaves. Death and life are closely associated, and, while we can not comprehend it all, there are few who would lose the exhilaration of a prolonged search for the sake of knowing it all at once.