39 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



attains the same end does just as "well. The felonious cuckoo 

 drops her foundlings unawares in another bird's nest ; the ostrich 

 trusts her unhatched offspring to the heat of the burning desert 

 sand ; and the Australian brush-turkeys, with vicarious maternal 

 instinct, collect great mounds of decaying and fermenting leaves 

 and rubbish, in which they deposit their eggs to be artificially 

 incubated, as it were, by the slow heat generated in the process of 

 putrefaction. Just in the same way, we shall see in the case of 

 seeds that any method of dispersion will serve the plant's purpose 

 equally well, provided only it succeeds in carrying a few of the 

 young seedlings to a proper place in which they may start fair at 

 last in the struggle for existence. 



As in the case of the fertilization of flowers, so in that of the 

 dispersal of seeds, there are two main ways in which the work is 

 effected by animals and by wind-power. I will not insult the 

 intelligence of the reader at the present time of day by telling 

 him that pollen is usually transferred from blossom to blossom in 

 one or other of these two chief ways it is carried on the heads or 

 bodies of bees and other honey-seeking insects, or else it is wafted 

 on the wings of the wind to the sensitive surface of a sister-flower. 

 So, too, seeds are for the most part either dispersed by animals or 

 blown about by the breezes of heaven to new situations. These 

 are the two most obvious means of locomotion provided by Na- 

 ture ; and it is curious to see that they have both been utilized 

 almost equally by plants, alike for their pollen and their seeds, 

 just as they have been utilized by man for his own purposes on 

 sea or land, in ship or windmill, or pack-horse, or carriage. 



There are two ways in which animals may be employed to dis- 

 perse seeds voluntarily and involuntarily. They may be com- 

 pelled to carry them against their wills ; or they may be bribed 

 and cajoled and flattered into doing the plant's work for it in re- 

 turn for some substantial advantage or benefit the plant confers 

 upon them. The first plan is the one adopted by burrs and 

 cleavers. These adhesive fruits are like the man who buttonholes 

 you and won't be shaken off : they are provided with little curved 

 hooks or bent and barbed hairs which catch upon the wool of 

 sheep, the coat of cattle, or the nether integuments of wayfaring 

 humanity, and can't be got rid of without some little difficulty. 

 Most of them, you will find on examination, belong to confirmed 

 hedgerow or woodside plants : they grow among bushes or low 

 scrub, and thickets of gorse or bramble. Now, to such plants as 

 these, it is obviously useful to have adhesive fruits or seeds : for, 

 when sheep or other animals get them caught in their coats, they 

 carry them away to other bushy spots, and there, to get rid of the 

 annoyance caused by the foreign body, scratch them off at once 

 against some holly-bush or blackthorn. You may often find seeds 



