THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 521 



soil are pitilessly stifled by those which follow them; the 

 prairie gives way to a thicket, and soon after this dies be- 

 neath the shady vaults of a vigorous forest. 



The fecundity of some fungi is quite extraordinary. Fries 

 counted more than 10,000,000 reproductive bodies in one 

 individual of the Retlcularia maxima. Other plants of the 

 same family rear a still larger progeny, the abundance of 

 which is prodigious, and which indeed cannot be numbered 

 by all the resources of the human intellect. 



The immeasurable fecundity of the gigantic Lycoperdon 

 is such that its microscopic grains must be counted by thou- 

 sands of millions. Now, although they are invisible to the 

 eye, each of these may yet give birth to a voluminous fun- 

 gus, which often in one night acquires the size of a gourd. 

 And it may be said, without hyperbole, that if the little 

 seeds of this plant were miraculously dispersed over the 

 whole globe, and were to be simultaneously developed, the 

 earth would be absolutely paved with them the next day. 



The air certainly plays the most important part in the 

 dissemination of vegetable life. A host of light seeds seem 

 to have been decorated with little plumes and membranous 

 wings only in order to be borne away by the winds. 



For this purpose the seeds of many Syngenesiae are sur- 

 mounted by plumes of outspread fibrillse, forming complete 

 parachutes, which the slightest breath of the zephyr bears 

 away. Torn from the mother plant, the seed, by means of 

 its aerial skiff, accomplishes the longest journeys. The 

 slightest breeze carries it up from the depth of the valley to 

 the mountain peaks. If the tempest rise, the little parachute, 

 borne away on the powerful wind, mingles with the stormy 



