knows very well that
there are cooks and cooks.

It is this slight but everywhere present admixture of the personal
quality--call it individuality, or what you will--that saves the world,
animal and vegetable alike, from stagnation. Every bush, every bird,
every man, together with its unmistakable and ineradicable likeness to
the parent stock, has received also a something, be it more or less,
that distinguishes it from all its fellows. Let our observation be
delicate enough, and we shall perceive that there are no duplicates of
any kind, the world over. It is part of the very unity of the world,
this universally diffused diversity.

It does a sympathetic observer good to see how humanly plants differ in
their likes and dislikes. One is catholic: as common people say, it is
not particular; it can live and thrive almost anywhere. Another must
have precisely such and such conditions, and is to be found, therefore,
only in very restricted localities. The _Dionaea_, or Venus's fly-trap,
is a famous example of this fastidiousness, growing in a small district
of North Carolina, and, as far as appears, nowhere else,--a highly
specialized plant, with no generic relative. Another instance is
furnished by a water lily (_Nymphaea elegans_), the rediscovery of which
is chronicled in a late issue of one of our botanical journals.[17]
"This lily was originally found in 1849, and has never been seen since,
holding its place in botanical literature for these almost forty years
on the strength of a single collection at a single vaguely described
station on the broad prairies of southwestern Texas;" now, after all
this time, it turns up again in another quarter of the same State. And
every student could report cases of a similar character, though less
striking than these, of course, within the limits of his own local
researches. If you ask me where I find dandelions, I answer, anywhere;
but if you wish me to show you the sweet colt's-foot (_Nardosmia
palmata_), you must go with me to one particular spot. Any of my
neighbors will tell you where the pink moccasin flower grows; but if it
is the yellow one you are in search of, I shall swear you to secrecy
before conducting you to its swampy hiding-place. Some plants, like some
people (but the plants, be it noted, are mostly weeds), seem to flourish
best away from home; others die under the most careful transplanting.
Some are lovers of the open, and cannot be too much in the sun; others
l