Part 10

The same thing occurred when the California people sent this saviour of horticulture to South Africa, where the white scale had also made its appearance.

It is not only beneficial insects, however, which are being imported, but diseases of injurious insects. In South Africa the colonists suffer severely from swarms of migratory grasshoppers, which fly from the north and destroy their crops. They have discovered out there a fungus disease, which under favorable conditions kills off the grasshoppers in enormous numbers. At the Bacteriological Institute in Grahamstown, Natal, they have cultivated this fungus in culture tubes, and have carried it successfully throughout the whole year; and they have used it practically by distributing these culture tubes wherever swarms of grasshoppers settle and lay their eggs. The disease, once started in an army of young grasshoppers, soon reduces them to harmless numbers. The United States Government last year secured culture tubes of this disease, and experiments carried on in Colorado and in Mississippi show that the vitality of the fungus had not been destroyed by its long ocean voyage, and many grasshoppers were killed by its spread. During the past winter other cultures were brought over from Cape Colony, and the fungus is being propagated in the Department of Agriculture for distribution during the coming summer in parts of the country where grasshoppers may prove to be destructively abundant.

Although we practically no longer have those tremendous swarms of migratory grasshoppers which used to come down like devastating armies in certain of our Western States and in a night devour everything green, still, almost every year, and especially in the West and South, there is somewhere a multiplication of grasshoppers to a very injurious degree, and it is hoped that the introduced fungus can be used in such cases.

Persons officially engaged in searching for remedies for injurious insects all over the world have banded themselves together in a society known as the Association of Economic Entomologists. They are constantly interchanging ideas regarding the destruction of insects, and at present active movements are on foot in this direction of interchanging beneficial insects. Entomologists in Europe will try the coming summer to send to the United States living specimens of a tree-inhabiting beetle which eats the caterpillar of the gipsy moth, and which will undoubtedly also eat the caterpillar so common upon the shade-trees of our principal Eastern cities, which is known as the Tussock moth caterpillar. An entomologist from the United States, Mr. C. L. Marlatt, has started for Japan, China, and Java, for the purpose of trying to find the original home of the famous San José scale--an insect which has been doing enormous damage in the apple, pear, peach, and plum orchards of the United States--and if he finds the original home of this scale, it is hoped that some natural enemy or parasite will be discovered which can be introduced into the United States to the advantage of our fruit-growers. Professor Berlese of Italy, and Dr. Reh, of Germany, will attempt the introduction into Europe of some of the parasites of injurious insects which occur in the United States, and particularly those of the woolly root-louse of the apple, known in Europe as the "American blight"--one of the few injurious insects which probably went to Europe from this country, and which in the United States is not so injurious as it is in Europe.

It is a curious fact, by the way, that while we have had most of our very injurious insects from Europe, American insects, when accidentally introduced into Europe, do not seem to thrive. The insect just mentioned, and the famous grape-vine Phylloxera, a creature which caused France a greater economic loss than the enormous indemnity which she had to pay to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War, are practically the only American insects with which we have been able to repay Europe for the insects which she has sent us. Climatic differences, no doubt, account for this strange fact, and our longer and warmer summers are the principal factor.

It is not alone the parasitic and predaceous insects which are beneficial. A new industry has been brought into the United States during the past two years by the introduction and acclimatization of the little insect which fertilizes the Smyrna fig in Mediterranean countries. The dried-fig industry in this country has never amounted to anything. The Smyrna fig has controlled the dried-fig markets of the world, but in California the Smyrna fig has never held its fruit, the young figs dropping from the trees without ripening. It was found that in Mediterranean regions a little insect, known as the Blastophaga, fertilizes the flowers of the Smyrna fig with pollen from the wild fig which it inhabits. The United States Department of Agriculture in the spring of 1899 imported successfully some of these insects through one of its travelling agents, Mr. W. T. Swingle, and the insect was successfully established at Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley. A far-sighted fruit-grower, Mr. George C. Roeding, of Fresno, had planted some years previously an orchard of 5,000 Smyrna fig trees and wild fig trees, and his place was the one chosen for the successful experiment. The little insect multiplied with astonishing rapidity, was carried successfully through the winter of 1899-1900, and in the summer of 1900 was present in such great numbers that it fertilized thousands of figs, and fifteen tons of them ripened. When these figs were dried and packed it was discovered that they were superior to the best imported figs. They contained more sugar and were of a finer flavor than those brought from Smyrna and Algeria. The Blastophaga has come to stay, and the prospects for a new and important industry are assured.

With all these experiments the criticism is constantly made that unwittingly new and serious enemies to agriculture may be introduced. The unfortunate introduction of the English sparrow into this country is mentioned, and the equally unfortunate introduction of the East Indian mongoose into the West Indies as well. The fear is expressed that the beneficial parasitic insects, after they have destroyed the injurious insects, will either themselves attack valuable crops or do something else of an equally harmful nature. But there is no reason for such alarm. The English sparrow feeds on all sorts of things, and the East Indian mongoose, while it was introduced into Jamaica to kill snakes, was found, too late, to be also a very general feeder. As a matter of fact, after the snakes were destroyed, and even before, it attacked young pigs, kids, lambs, calves, puppies, and kittens, and also destroyed bananas, pineapples, corn, sweet potatoes, cocoanuts, peas, sugar corn, meat, and salt provisions and fish. But with the parasitic and predatory insects the food habits are definite and fixed. They can live on nothing but their natural food, and in its absence they die. The Australian ladybird originally imported, for example, will feed upon nothing but scale insects of a particular genus, and, as a matter of fact, as soon as the fluted scales became scarce the California officials had the greatest difficulty in keeping the little beetles alive, and were actually obliged to cultivate for food the very insects which they were formerly so anxious to wipe out of existence! With the Scutellista parasite the same fact holds. The fly itself does not feed, and its young feed only upon certain scale insects, and so with all the rest.

All of these experiments are being carried on by men learned in the ways of insects, and only beneficial results, or at the very least negative ones, can follow. And even where only one such experiment out of a hundred is successful, what a saving it will mean!

We do not expect the time to come when the farmer, finding Hessian fly in his wheat, will have only to telegraph the nearest experiment station, "Send at once two dozen first-class parasites;" but in many cases, and with a number of different kinds of injurious insects, especially those introduced from foreign countries, it is probable that we can gain much relief by the introduction of their natural enemies from their original home.

THE STRANGE STORY OF THE FLOWERS

GEORGE ILES

Imagine a Venetian doge, a French crusader, a courtier of the time of the second Charles, an Ojibway chief, a Justice of the Supreme Court, in the formal black of evening dress, and how much each of them would lose! Where there is beauty, strength or dignity, dress can heighten it; where all these are lacking, their absence is kept out of mind by raiment in itself worthy to be admired. If dress artificial has told for much in the history of human-kind, dress natural has told for yet more in the lesser world of plant and insect life. In some degree the tiny folk that reign in the air, like ourselves, are drawn by grace of form, by charm of colour; of elaborate display of their attractions moths, butterflies and beetles are just as fond as any belles of the ball-room. Now let us bear in mind that of all the creatures that share the earth with man, the one that stands next to him in intelligence is neither a biped nor a quadruped, but that king of the insect tribe, the ant, which can be a herdsman and warehouse-keeper, an engineer and builder, an explorer and a general. With all his varied powers the ant lacks a peculiarity in his costume which has denied him enlistment in a task of revolution in which creatures far his inferiors have been able to change the face of the earth. And the marvel of this peculiarity of garb which has meant so much, is that it consists in no detail of graceful outline, or beauty of tint, but solely in the minor matter of texture. The ant, warrior that he is, wears smooth and shining armour; the bee, the moth and the butterfly are clad in downy vesture, and simply because thus enabled to catch dust on their clothes these insects, as weavers of the web of life, have counted for immensely more than the ant with all his brains and character. To understand the mighty train of consequences set in motion by this mere shagginess of coat, let us remember that, like a human babe, every flowering plant has two parents. These two parents, though a county's breadth divide them, are wedded the instant that pollen from the anther of one of them meets the stigma of the other. Many flowers find their mates upon their own stem; but, as in the races of animals, too close intermarriage is hurtful, and union with a distant stock promotes both health and vigor. Hence the great gain which has come to plants by engaging the wind as their matchmaker--as every summer shows us in its pollen-laden air, the oaks, the pines, the cottonwoods, and a host of other plants commit to the breeze the winged atoms charged with the continuance of their kind. Nevertheless, long as the wind has been employed at this work, it has not yet learned to do it well; nearly all the pollen entrusted to it is wasted, and this while its production draws severely upon the strength of a plant. As good fortune will have it, a great many flowers close to their pollen yield an ample supply of nectar: a food esteemed delicious by the whole round of insects, winged and wingless. While ants might sip this nectar of ages without plants being any the better or the worse; a very different result has followed upon the visits of bees, wasps, and other hairy-coated callers. These, as they devour nectar, dust themselves with the pollen near by. Yellowed or whitened with this freightage, moth and butterfly, as they sail through the air, know not that they are publishing the banns of marriage between two blossoms acres or, it may be, miles apart. Yet so it is. Alighting on a new flower the insect rubs a pollen grain on a stigma ready to receive it, and lo! the rites of matrimony are solemnized then and there. Unwittingly the little visitor has wrought a task bigger with fate than many an act loudly trumpeted among the mightiest deeds of men! On the threshold of a Lady's Slipper a bee may often be detected in the act of entrance. In the Sage-flower he finds an anther of the stamen which, pivoted on its spring, dusts him even more effectually.

Bountifully to spread a table is much, but not enough, for without invitation how can hospitality be dispensed? To the feast of nectar the blossoms join their bidding; and those most conspicuously borne and massed, gayest of hue, richest in odor, secure most guests, and are therefore most likely to transmit to their kind their own excellences as hosts and entertainers. Thus all the glories of the blossoms have arisen in doing useful work; their beauty is not mere ornament, but the sign and token of duty well performed. Our opportunity to admire the radiancy and perfume of a jessamine or a pond-lily is due to the previous admiration of uncounted winged attendants. If a winsome maid adorns herself with a wreath from the garden, and carries a posy gathered at the brookside, it is for the second time that their charms are impressed into service; for the flowers' own ends of attraction all their scent and loveliness were called into being long before.

Let us put flowers of the blue flag beside those of the maple, and we shall have a fair contrast between the brilliancy of blossoms whose marrier has been an insect, and the dinginess of flowers indebted to the services of the wind. Can it be that both kinds of flowers are descended from forms resembling each other in want of grace and colour? Such, indeed, is the truth. But how, as the generations of the flowers succeeded one another, did differences so striking come about? In our rambles afield let us seek a clue to the mystery. It is late in springtime, and near the border of a bit of swamp we notice a clump of violets: they are pale of hue, and every stalk of them rises to an almost weedy height.

Twenty paces away, on a knoll of dry ground, we find more violets, but these are in much deeper tints of azure and yellow, while their stalks are scarcely more than half as tall as their brethren near the swamp. Six weeks pass by. This time we walk to a wood-lot close to a brimming pond. At its edge are more than a score wild-rose bushes. On the very first of them we see that some of the blossoms are a light pink, others a pink so deep as to seem dashed with vivid red. And while a flower here and there is decidedly larger and more vigorous than its fellows, a few of the blossoms are undersized and puny: the tide of life flows high and merrily in a fortunate rose or two, it seems to ebb and falter by the time it reaches one or two of their unhappy mates. As we search bush after bush we are at last repaid for sundry scratches from their thorns by securing a double rose, a "sport," as the gardener would call it. And in the broad meadow between us and home we well know that for the quest we can have not only four-leaved clovers, but perchance a handful of five and six-leaved prizes. The secret is out. Flowers and leaves are not cast like bullets in rigid moulds, but differ from their parents much as children do. Usually the difference is slight, at times it is as marked as in our double rose. Whenever the change in a flower is for the worse, as in the sickly violets and roses we have observed, that particular change ends there--with death. But when the change makes a healthy flower a little more attractive to its insect ministers, it will naturally be chosen by them for service, and these choosings, kept up year after year, and century upon century, have at last accomplished much the same result as if the moth, the bee, and the rest of them had been given power to create blossoms of the most welcome forms, the most alluring tints, the most bewitching perfumes.

In farther jaunts afield we shall discover yet more. It is May, and a heavy rainstorm has caused the petals of a trillium to forget themselves and return to their primitive hue of leafy green. A month later we come upon a buttercup, one of whose sepals has grown out as a small but perfect leaf. Later still in summer we find a rose in the same surprising case, while not far off is a columbine bearing pollen on its spurs instead of its anthers. What family tie is betrayed in all this? No other than that sepals, petals, anthers and pistils are but leaves in disguise, and that we have detected nature returning to the form from which ages ago she began to transmute the parts of flowers in all their teeming diversity. The leaf is the parent not only of all these but of delicate tendrils, which save a vine the cost of building a stem stout enough to lift it to open air and sunshine. However thoroughly, or however long, a habit may be impressed upon a part of a plant, it may on occasion relapse into a habit older still, resume a shape all but forgotten, and thus tell a story of its past that otherwise might remain forever unsuspected. Thus it is with the somewhat rare "sport" that gives us a morning glory or a harebell in its primitive form of unjoined petals. The bell form of these and similar flowers has established itself by being much more effective than the original shape in dusting insect servitors with pollen. Not only the forms of flowers but their massing has been determined by insect preferences; a wide profusion of blossoms grow in spikes, umbels, racemes and other clusters, all economizing the time of winged allies, and attracting their attention from afar as scattered blossoms would fail to do. Besides this massing, we have union more intimate still as in the dandelion, the sun-flower and the marigold. These and their fellow composites each seem an individual; a penknife discloses each of them to be an aggregate of blossoms. So gainful has this kind of co-operation proved that composites are now dominant among plants in every quarter of the globe. As to how composites grew before they learned that union is strength, a hint is dropped in the "sport" of the daisy known as "the hen and chickens," where perhaps as many as a dozen florets, each on a stalk of its own, ray out from a mother flower.

While for the most part insects have been mere choosers from among various styles of architecture set before them by plants, they have sometimes risen to the dignity of builders on their own account, and without ever knowing it. The buttress of the larkspur has sprung forth in response to the pressure of one bee's weight after another, and many a like structure has had the very same origin,--or shall we say, provocation? In these and in other examples unnumbered, culminating in the marvellous orchids and their ministers, there has come about the closest adaptation of flower-shape to insect-form, the one now clearly the counterpart of the other.

We must not forget that the hospitality of a flower is after all the hospitality of an inn-keeper who earns and requires payment. Vexed as flowers are apt to be by intruders that consume their stores without requital, no wonder that they present so ample an array of repulsion and defence. Best of all is such a resource as that of the red clover, which hides its honey at the bottom of a tube so deep that only a friendly bumblebee can sip it. Less effective, but well worth a moment's examination, are the methods by which leaves are opposed as fences for the discouragement of thieves. Here, in a Bellwort, is a perfoliate leaf that encircles the stem upon which it grows; and there in a Honeysuckle is a connate leaf on much the same plan, formed of two leaves, stiff and strong, soldered at their bases. Sometimes the pillager meets prickles that sting him, as in the roses and briers; and if he is a little fellow he is sure to regard him with intense disgust, a bristly guard of wiry hair--hence the commonness of that kind of fortification. Against enemies of larger growth a tree or shrub will often aim sharp thorns--another piece of masquerade, for thorns are but branches checked in growth, and frowning with a barb in token of disappointment at not being able to smile in a blossom. In every jot and tittle of barb and prickle, of the glossiness which disheartens or the gumminess which ensnares, we may be sure that equally with all the lures of hue, form and scent, nothing, however trifling it may seem, is as we find it, except through usefulness long tested and approved. In flowers, much that at first glance looks like idle decoration, on closer scrutiny reveals itself as service in disguise. In penetrating these disguises and many more of other phases, the student of flowers delights to busy himself. He loves, too, to detect the cousinship of plants through all the change of dress and habit due to their rearing under widely different skies and nurture, to their being surrounded by strangely contrasted foes and friends. Often he can link two plants together only by going into partnership with a student of the rocks, by turning back the records of the earth until he comes upon a flower long extinct, a plant which ages ago found the struggle for life too severe for it. He ever takes care to observe his flowers accurately and fully, but chiefly that he may rise from observation to explanation, from bare facts to their causes, from declaring What, to understanding, Whence and How.

One of the stock resources of novelists, now somewhat out of date, was the inn-keeper who beamed in welcome of his guest, grasped his hand in gladness, and loaded a table for him in tempting array, and all with intent that later in the day (or night) he might the more securely plunge a dagger into his victim's heart--if, indeed, he had not already improved an opportunity to offer to that victim's lips a poisoned cup. This imagined treachery might well have been suggested by the behaviour of certain alluring plants that so far from repelling thieves, or discouraging pillagers, open their arms to all comers--with purpose of the deadliest. Of these betrayers the chief is the round-leaved sun-dew, which plies its nefarious vocation all the way from Labrador to Florida. Its favourite site is a peat-bog or a bit of swampy lowland, where in July and August we can see its pretty little white blossoms beckoning to wayfaring flies and moths their token of good cheer! Circling the flower-stalk, in rosette fashion, are a dozen or more round leaves, each of them wearing scores of glands, very like little pins, a drop of gum glistening on each and every pin by way of head. This appetizing gum is no other than a fatal stick-fast, the raying pins closing in its aid the more certainly to secure a hapless prisoner. Soon his prison-house becomes a stomach for his absorption. Its duty of digestion done, the leaf in all seeming guilessness once more expands itself for the enticement of a dupe. To see how much the sun-dew must depend upon its meal of insects we have only to pull it up from the ground. A touch suffices--it has just root enough to drink by; the soil in which it makes, and perhaps has been obliged to make, its home has nothing else but drink to give it.

Less accomplished in its task of assassination is the common butterwort to be found on wet rocks in scattered districts of Canada and the States adjoining Canada. Surrounding its pretty violet flowers, of funnel shape, are gummy leaves which close upon their all too trusting guests, but with less expertness than the sun-dew's. The butterwort is but a 'prentice hand in the art of murder, and its intended victims often manage to get away from it. Built on a very different model is the bladderwort, busy in stagnant ponds near the sea coast from Nova Scotia to Texas. Its little white spongy bladders, about a tenth of an inch across, encircle the flowering stem by scores. From each bladder a bunch of twelve or fifteen hairy prongs protrude, giving the structure no slight resemblance to an insect form. These prongs hide a valve which, as many an unhappy little swimmer can attest, opens inward easily enough, but opens outward never. As in the case of its cousinry a-land, the bladderwort at its leisure dines upon its prey.

In marshy places near the mouth of the Cape Fear River, in the vicinity of Wilmington, North Carolina, grows the Venus' fly-trap, most wonderful of all the death-dealers of vegetation. Like much else in nature's handiwork this plant might well have given inventors a hint worth taking. The hairy fringes of its leaves are as responsive to a touch from moth or fly as the sensitive plant itself. And he must be either a very small or a particularly sturdy little captive that can escape through the sharp opposed teeth of its formidable snare. It is one of the unexplained puzzles of plant life that the Venus' fly-trap, so marvellous in its ingenuity, should not only be confined to a single district, but should seem to be losing its hold of even that small kingdom. Of still another type is the pitcher plant, or side-saddle flower, which flaunts its deep purple petals in June in many a peat-bog from Canada southward to Louisiana and Florida. Its leaves develop themselves into lidded cups, half-filled with sweetish juice, which first lures a fly or ant, then makes him tipsy, and then despatches him. The broth resulting is both meat and drink to the plant, serving as a store and reservoir against times of drought and scarcity.

Now the question is, How came about this strange and somewhat horrid means of livelihood? How did plants of so diverse families turn the tables on the insect world, and learn to eat instead of being themselves devoured? A beginner in the builder's art finds it much more gainful to examine the masonry of foundations, the rearing of walls, the placing of girders and joists, the springing of arches and buttresses, than to look at a cathedral, a courthouse, or a bank, finished and in service. In like manner a student of insect-eating plants tries to find their leaves in the making, in all the various stages which bridge their common forms with the shapes they assume when fully armed and busy. Availing himself of the relapses into old habits which plants occasionally exhibit under cultivation, Mr. Dickson has taught us much regarding the way the pitcher plant of Australia, the Cephalotus, has come to be what it is. He has arranged in a connected series all the forms of its leaf from that of a normal leaf with a mere dimple in it, to the deeply pouched and lidded pitcher ready for deceitful hospitalities. And similar transformations have without doubt taken place in the pitcher plants of America. Observers in the Cape of Good Hope have noted two plants Roridula dentata and Biblys gigantea, which are evidently following in the footsteps of the sundews, and may be expected in the fulness of years to be their equal partners in crime. But why need we wander so far as South Africa to find the germs of this strange rapacity when we can see at home a full dozen species of catch-fly, sedums, primulas, and geraniums pouring out glutinous juices in which insects are entangled? Let stress of hunger, long continued, force any of these to turn its attention to the dietary thus proffered, and how soon might not the plant find in felony the sustenance refused to honest toil?

But after all the plants that have meat for dinner are only a few. The greater part of the vegetable kingdom draws its supplies from the air and the soil. Those plants, and they are many, that derive their chief nourishment from the atmosphere have a decidedly thin diet. Which of us would thrive on milk at the rate of a pint to five hogsheads of water? Such is the proportion in which air contains carbonic acid gas, the main source of strength for many thousands of trees, shrubs, and other plants. No wonder that they array themselves in so broad an expanse of leafage. An elm with a spread of seventy feet is swaying in the summer breeze at least five acres of foliage as its lungs and stomach. Beyond the shade of elms and maples let us stroll past yonder stretch of pasture and we shall notice how the grass in patches here and there deepens into green of the richest--a plain token of moisture in the hollows--a blessing indeed in this dry weather. In the far West and Northwest the buffalo grass has often to contend with drought for months together, so that it has learned to strike deep in quest of water to quench its thirst. It is a by-word among the ranchmen that the roots go clear through the earth and are clinched as they sprout from the ground in China. Joking apart, they have been found sixty-eight feet below the surface of the prairie, and often in especially dry seasons cattle would perish were not these faithful little well-diggers and pumpers constantly at work for them. In the river valleys of Arizona although the air is dry the subsoil water is near the surface of the ground. Here flourishes the mesquit tree, Prosopis juliflora, with a tale to tell well worth knowing. When a mesquit seems stunted, it is because its strength is withdrawn for the task of delving to find water; where a tree grows tall with goodly branches, it betokens success in reaching moisture close at hand. Thus in shrewdly reading the landscape a prospector can choose the spot where with least trouble he can sink his well. And plants discover provender in the soil as well as drink. Nearer home than Arizona we have only to dislodge a beach pea from the ground to see how far in search of food its roots have dug amid barren stones and pebbles. Often one finds a plant hardly a foot high with roots extending eight feet from its stem.

And beyond the beaches where the beach peas dig so diligently are the seaweeds--with a talent for picking and choosing all their own. Dr. Julius Sachs, a leading German botanist, believes that the parts of plants owe their form, as crystals do, to their peculiarities of substance; that just as salt crystallizes in one shape and sugar in another, so a seaweed or a tulip is moulded by the character of its juices. Something certainly of the crystal's faculty for picking out particles akin to itself, and building with them, is shown by the kelp which attracts from the ocean both iodine and bromine--often dissolved though they are in a million times their bulk of sea water. This trait of choosing this or that dish from the feast afforded by sea or soil or air is not peculiar to the seaweeds; every plant displays it. Beech trees love to grow on limestone and thus declare to the explorer the limestone ridge he seeks. In the Horn silver mine, of Utah, the zinc mingled with the silver ore is betrayed by the abundance of the zinc violet, a delicate and beautiful cousin of the pansy. In Germany this little flower is admittedly a signal of zinc in the earth, and zinc is found in its juices. The late Mr. William Dorn, of South Carolina, had faith in a bush, of unrecorded name, as betokening gold-bearing veins beneath it. That his faith was not without foundation is proved by the large fortune he won as a gold miner in the Blue Ridge country--his guide the bush aforesaid. Mr. Rossiter W. Raymond, the eminent mining engineer of New York, has given some attention to this matter of "indicative plants." He is of the opinion that its unwritten lore among practical miners, prospectors, hunters, and Indians is well worth sifting. Their observations, often faulty, may occasionally be sound and valuable enough richly to repay the trouble of separating truth from error. When we see how important as signs of water many plants can be, why may we not find other plants denoting the minerals which they especially relish as food or condiment?

Of more account than gold or silver are the harvests of wheat and corn that ripen in our fields. There the special appetites of plants have much more than merely curious interest for the farmer. He knows full well that his land is but a larder which serves him best when not part but all its stores are in demand. Hence his crop "rotation," his succession of wheat to clover, of grass to both. Were he to grow barley every year he would soon find his soil bared of all the food that barley asks, while fare for peas or clover stood scarcely broached. If he insists on planting barley always, then he must perforce restore to the land the food for barley constantly withdrawn.

A plant may diligently find food and drink, pour forth delicious nectar, array itself with flowers as gayly as it can, and still behold its work unfinished. Its seed may be produced in plenty, and although as far as that goes it is well, it is not enough. Of what avail is all this seed if it falls as it ripens upon soil already overcrowded with its kind? Hence the vigorous emigration policy to be observed in plants of every name. Hence the fluffy sails set to catch the passing breeze by the dandelion, the thistle and by many more, including the southern plant of snowy wealth whose wings are cotton. With the same intent of seeking new fields are the hooks of the burdock, the unicorn plant, and the bur-parsley which impress as carriers the sheep and cattle upon a thousand hills. The Touch-me-not and the herb Robert adopt a different plan, and convert their seed-cases into pistols for the firing of seeds at as wide range as twenty feet or more. The maple, the ash, the hornbeam, the elm and the birch have yet another method of escape from the home acre. Their seeds are winged, and torn off in a gale are frequently borne two hundred yards away. And stronger wings than these are plied in the cherry tree's service. The birds bide the time when a blush upon the fruit betrays its ripeness. Then the cherries are greedily devoured, and their seed, preserved from digestion in their stony cases are borne over hill, dale, and river to some islet or brookside where a sprouting cherry plant will be free from the stifling rivalries suffered by its parent. Yoked in harness with sheep, ox, and bird as planter is yonder nimble squirrel. We need not begrudge him the store of nuts he hides. He will forget some of them, he will be prevented by fright or frost from nibbling yet more, and so without intending it he will ensure for others and himself a sure succession of acorns and butternuts.

Very singular are the seeds that have come to resemble beetles; among these may be mentioned the seeds of the castor-oil plant and of the Iatropha. The pod of the Biserrula looks like a worm, and a worm half-coiled might well have served as a model for the mimicry of the Scorpiurus vermiculata. All these are much more likely to enlist the services of birds than if their resemblances to insects were less striking.

Nature elsewhere rich in hints to the gardener and the farmer is not silent here. A lesson plainly taught in all this apparatus for the dispersal of seeds is that the more various the planting the fuller the harvest. Now that from the wheat fields comes a cry of disappearing gains, it is time to heed the story told in the unbroken prairie that diversity in sowing means wealth in reaping.