ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND. 397 



of this type sticking on thorns as the nucleus of a little matted 

 mass of wool, so left by the sheep in the very spots best adapted 

 for the free growth of their vigorous seedlings. 



Even among plants which trust to the involuntary services of 

 animals in dispersing their seeds, a great many varieties of detail 

 may be observed on close inspection. For example, in hound's- 

 tongue and goose-grass, two of the best-known instances among 

 our common English weeds, each little nut is covered with many 

 small hooks, which make it catch on firmly by several points of 

 attachment to passing animals. These are the kinds we human 

 beings of either sex oftenest find clinging to our skirts or trousers 

 after a walk in a rabbit-warren. But in herb-bennet and avens 

 each nut has a single long awn, crooked near the middle with a 

 very peculiar S-shaped joint, which effectually catches on to the 

 wool or hair, but drops at the elbow after a short period of wither- 

 ing. Sometimes, too, the whole fruit is provided with prehensile 

 hooks, while sometimes it is rather the individual seeds themselves 

 that are so accommodated. Oddest of all is the plan followed by 

 the common burdock. Here, an involucre or common cup-shaped 

 receptacle of hooked bracts surrounds an entire head of purple 

 tubular flowers, and each of these flowers produces in time a dis- 

 tinct fruit ; but the hooked involucre contains the whole compound 

 mass, and, being pulled off bodily by a stray sheep or dog, effects 

 the transference of the composite lot at once to some fitting place 

 for their germination. 



Those plants, on the other hand, which depend rather, like 

 London hospitals, upon the voluntary system, produce that very 

 familiar form of edible capsule which we commonly call in the 

 restricted sense a fruit or berry. In such cases, the seed-vessel is 

 usually swollen and pulpy ; it is stored with sweet juices to attract 

 the birds or other animal allies, and it is brightly colored so as 

 to advertise to their eyes the presence of the alluring sugary food- 

 stuff. These instances, however, are now so familiar to every- 

 body that I won't dwell upon them at any length. Even the degen- 

 erate school-boy of the present day, much as he has declined from 

 the high standard set forth by Macaulay, knows all about the way 

 the actual seed itself is covered (as in the plum or the cherry) by a 

 hard, stony coat which " resists the action of the gastric juice " (so 

 physiologists put it, with their usual frankness), and thus passes 

 undigested through the body of its swallower. All I will do here, 

 therefore, is to note very briefly that some edible fruits, like the 

 two just mentioned, as well as the apricot, the peach, the nec- 

 tarine, and the mango, consist of a single seed with its outer cov- 

 ering ; in others, as in the raspberry, the blackberry, the cloud- 

 berry, and the dewberry, many seeds are massed together, each 

 with a separate edible pulp ; in yet others, as in the gooseberry, 



