But their descendants, secure in their own power, can afford to be generous, and allow a whole world of lesser plants to nestle in their branches, another world to fatten round their feet.

There are humble and modest plants, too, here--and those some of the loveliest--which have long since cast away all ambition, and are content to crouch or perch anywhere, if only they may be allowed a chance ray of light, and a chance drop of water wherewith to perfect their flowers and seed.

But, throughout the great republic of the forest, the motto of the majority is--as it is, and always has been, with human beings--'Every one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.' Selfish competition, overreaching tyranny, the temper which fawns and clings as long as it is down, and when it has risen, kicks over the stool by which it climbed--these and the other 'works of the flesh' are the works of the average plant, as far as it can practise them.

So by the time the Bamboo-vine makes up its mind, it will have discovered, by the experience of many generations, the value of the proverb, 'Never do for yourself what you can get another to do for you,' and will have developed into a true high climber, selfish and insolent, choking and strangling, like yonder beautiful green pest, of which beware; namely, a tangle of Razor- grass.

{162a} The brother, in old times, of that broad-leaved sedge which carries the shot-seeds, it has long since found it more profitable to lean on others than to stand on its own legs, and has developed itself accordingly.