and broad-leaved sedges, five feet high, carrying on bright brown flower-heads, like those of our Wood-rush, blue, black, and white shot for seeds. {161b} Overhead, sprawled and dangled the common Vine-bamboo, {161c} ugly and unsatisfactory in form, because it has not yet, seemingly, made up its mind whether it will become an arborescent or a climbing grass; and, meanwhile, tries to stand upright on stems quite unable to support it, and tumbles helplessly into the neighbouring copsewood, taking every one’s arm without asking leave.  A few ages hence, its ablest descendants will probably have made their choice, if they have constitution enough to survive in the battle of life—­which, from the commonness of the plant, they seem likely to have.  And what their choice will be, there is little doubt.  There are trees here of a truly noble nature, whose ancestors have conquered ages since; it may be by selfish and questionable means.  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.  It has climbed up the shrubs some fifteen feet, and is now tumbling down again in masses of the purest deep green, which are always softly rounded, because each slender leaf is sabre-shaped, and always curves inward and downward into the mass, presenting to the paper thousands of minute saw-edges, hard enough and sharp enough to cut clothes, skin, and flesh to ribands, if it is brushed in the direction of the leaves.  For shape and colour, few plants would look more lovely in a hothouse; but it would soon need to be confined in a den by itself, like a jaguar or an alligator.