The geological history of the region, the links with the past of the species composing the vegetation, the climate, the cooperation of various outside agencies in seed dispersal, the conflict of different species, and of different vegetation types, these and scores of other factors, operating to-day, or having operated in the past--it is all these that are reflected in the plant covering of the earth. The variety and beauty of that covering are too well understood to need further mention here. The extraordinary efforts that the plant world makes to keep all but a minute fraction of the earth clothed with some sort of vegetation we have seen in the pages just turned. No other phase of the study of plant life is so replete with interest as plant distribution. Rightly understood, it is a study, “the cultural, esthetic and practical value of which may well outweigh any other.” GENERAL CONCLUSION We have now traced, all too briefly and with the many omissions that such a general account as this makes necessary, the broad outlines of plant life. From the architecture of their outer characteristics, which takes up the first chapter, we have gone step by step into the story of what goes on within the plant, and how it reproduces its kind. These actions or behavior of plants have resulted in many things of great practical importance as well as being of absorbing interest in themselves. What some of these results have been, we see reflected in the uses of plants to man, in the history of their development, and, most of all, in the way they are distributed over the earth to-day. If plants are still “just plants” to most readers, this book has been written in vain. Those who have gleaned from its pages some conception of what a fundamental thing plant life is, will doubtless want more information than could be included here. If any considerable proportion of the readers of this volume feel that they have already outgrown it, and that they have many questions about the plant world for which they will have to go to more specialized works for the answer, then this book has more than fulfilled its mission. FOOTNOTES: [1] After living probably as long as the Big Trees of California, the most famous dragon tree in the world was destroyed by a great storm. It has been replaced by seedlings. [2] A process recently discovered in England for extracting the fiber of this rush by a chemical bath has greatly increased the fiber possibilities of this common rush. Heretofore it has been used only for coarse weaving of rugs and mattings in Japan. By the new process a fine fiber capable of spinning is extracted that may eventually compete with jute. [3] Copyright, 1912. Doubleday, Page & Company. [4] The term “indifferent” in this connection is used to signify that the plant will adapt itself to average conditions. [5] Plants marked thus belong to the heath family and require special conditions as indicated in text.