stalls in the early spring— is a favourite
flower, and its curious appearance with face
turned to the mould, and rosy petals bent
back that their beauty may not be altogether
lost, is entirely owing to the habit of carrying
the seeds to the ground. The clover, as
the time of planting approaches, surrounds
the seed-vessel with spiny projections, which
protect the germs while digging their way
down into the soil. Many seeds when ripe
simply escape from the vessel in which they
were born, and fall to the ground, and this
is done so quietly by some as to make it
not an easy matter to collect them. We all
know how frequently mignonette seed
escapes; the little bell in which the seeds are
contained permitting them to fall as they are
perfected.

The distribution of such seeds must
be over a small space, unless they be taken
from place to place by any accidental
process. But there are, again, plants which
distribute their seeds by mechanical force.
The balsam and touch-me-not will, in this
way cast their little seed many feet around.
If the ripe pods of the touch-me-not be
touched with the finger it will almost always
fire a discharge of seed against the enemy.
Those seeds which will bear soaking are
frequently distributed by streams; land is
continually being washed away from river
banks or shores and thrown up again
elsewhere. Thus Humboldt speaks of seeds,
which must have been born by plants and
trees in Jamaica and Cuba, appearing on the
shores of the Hebrides. Bees and other
insects do much planting. Sheep also, and
other woolly animals collect seed as they go,
and carry it about; in this way the seeds of
agrimony are disseminated. But man is the
chief planter; not to mention the roots and
herbs which he has brought from afar for his
daily food, the common groundsel which now
comes up everywhere was brought from Asia
with grain; and the Canadian fleabane, which
is now to be seen all over France, Germany,
Holland and Italy, was brought over from
America and planted about a hundred years
ago in Paris. Sea-weeds propagate their
species in an extraordinary manner; indeed,
they assume the character of animals rather
than plants. Thanks to the beautiful aquarium,
which is beginning to be popular, we
may know more about water-weeds, but
as yet they are little understood. They
deserve careful attention; for not only
do these useful things revivify the sea
by pouring forth bubbles of vital air, but
they supply man with dyes, with manure
which gives the blessing of fertility to the
poorest heath-land, and with useful salts.
They supply the physician with a potent
medicine, and even give us food in a few
wholesome forms. In the sea-weeds we
have the seeds crowded in cells on the
tough leaf of the plant. They are very
minute, and surrounded by hair gifted with
vibratory motion when the little germs are
about leaving home. In due time the cell
bursts, and forth pours a future population—
each seed with its moving hairs employed in
rowing them away to a fit place of rest. An
old observer who watched all this in a few
weeds placed in a glass vessel for the purpose,
remarks that the sudden emptying of the
bags of seed causes a great commotion of the
water in their neighbourhood; and the
departure of the flocks appears to take place
at fixed periods, generally betimes in the
morning: one sea-weed choosing the hour of
eight: another, daybreak.

One important agent in the sowing and
distribution of seed is, of course, the wind;
and those seeds which are intended to be
blown abroad are either sufficiently light in
themselves, or are assisted by a flying
apparatus. We all understand how the seed is
scattered from the feathery ball of the dandelion.
This plant, excellent as salad, useful in
medicine, and so much esteemed that people
roast its roots as a substitute for coffee, is one
of many which supply their seeds with an
arrangement of feathery hairs. In all these,
when the seeds are ripe, the case in which
they are packed becomes exposed, releases its
grasp of them, and yields them up to every
passing breath. The cotton grass is
supplied with so much of this feathery
material as to give a character to the fields in
which it grows. Mrs. S. C. Hall said she
saw scores of bogs in Ireland looking like
fields of snow, from the immense quantity of
cotton-grass-down with which they were
covered. Hedges in which travellers' joy is
abundant, have a beautiful appearance at
seed-time, owing to the silvery plume which
appears on the fruit. There is one plant—
the rose of Jericho — perfectly unique in its
way of planting by the agency of wind. It
grows in the driest deserts. When the seed
is ripe, the branches wither and coil up into
a ball; then, as the root has little hold of the
ground, the wind easily tears it up and rolls
it along until a moist spot is reached; the
branches then unfurl, and, by this unfurling
motion, are stopped; the seed-vessel bursts,
and the germs are thus deposited where they
can grow.

An immense number of seeds need none of
these contrivances to help them on their way ;
their lightness and minuteness is
astonishing. The spores of ferns are mere dust,
those of the club-moss are but the eighteen
thousandth of an inch in thickness. The
toadstool family is still more notable for its
small spores, and the immense numbers in
which they are found in one plant. Fries tells
us he counted — by a microscopic calculation
— in a single fungus ten millions of spores,
and they were so small as to form a mere
cloud when stirred into the air. These lichens,
mosses, and fungi, constituting the lower
orders of vegetable society, seem in an especial
manner capable of universal distribution.