Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/711

Rh whether by the advent of man or from whatever cause, and this equilibrium is immediately disturbed. The chained forces are set free; a general swarming begins; some individuals are destroyed, others are liberated; each pushes its advantage to the utmost, and all move forward in the direction of least resistance, till at length they again mutually neutralize each other, and again come, under new conditions and modified forms, into the former state of quiescence.

The most frequent and prominent cause of these disturbances of the natural fixity of vegetation is the influence of man. The results of this influence may be said to be the products of agriculture, horticulture, and floriculture, on the one hand, and, on the other, weeds. But there may be many other causes of disturbance besides that produced by man, such as the appearance of new animals, geological revolutions, or climatal and meteorological vicissitudes. Anything which destroys the stability which the perpetually-operating vegetal forces impose upon the plants of any region is certain to reveal a latent vitality, which, when liberated, proves itself capable of profiting by conditions far different from, and superior to, those under which it is originally found. The willow, the alder, the elm, and the sycamore, hug the banks of streams because baffled and beaten back at every attempt to invade the drier ground. The wild-columbine and the saxifrage are driven into their rocky fastnesses by more powerful rivals for the rich forest loams. The thistle and the chamomile flourish in lawns and commons because their human foes are less formidable than the enemies of the plain. The fruit-trees, the cereals, and the roses, reach those wonderful heights of development under man's care, because he not only proves their friend, but wards off all their enemies. And just here it should be remarked that the alleged tendency of cultivated plants to relapse, when neglected, into their original state, upon which Prof. Agassiz laid so much stress as an unanswerable argument against transmutation, becomes, under the law of mutual repulsion, the necessary result of remanding them to their old conditions. As man's care and protection were necessary to enable them to advance, so, when these are withdrawn, they must be expected to again yield to hostile forces, and fall back to the level of their original state. It is not the special adaptation of a plant for the spot on which it grows, so much as the hostile attitude of other plants around it, which restricts and determines its range. The elements which decide where plants shall grow, are to be found in vegetation itself, and not in inorganic conditions. The power of self-adaptation which they possess is sufficient to habituate almost any species to almost any inorganic conditions. Each species, therefore, keeps within its own restricted limits, not because it cannot live in other soils, but because prior occupants forbid it to come.

The law of adaptation may therefore be reduced to this: that every plant possesses the power of self-adaptation to such a degree