4 o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



squat, and wingless. Thus does the plant make the best of all 

 chances that may happen to open before it ; if one lot goes far 

 and fares but ill, the other is pretty sure to score a bull's-eye. 



These are only a few selected examples of the infinite dodges 

 employed by enlightened herbs and shrubs to propagate their 

 scions in foreign parts. Many more, equally interesting, must be 

 left undescribed. Only for a single case more can I still find room 

 that of the subterranean clover, which has been driven by its 

 numerous enemies to take refuge at last in a very remarkable and 

 almost unique mode of protecting its offspring. This particular 

 kind of clover affects smooth and close-cropped hillsides, where the 

 sheep nibble down the grass and other herbage almost as fast as it 

 springs up again. Now, clover seeds resemble their allies of the 

 pea and bean tribe in being exceedingly rich in starch and other 

 valuable foodstuffs. Hence, they are much sought after by the 

 inquiring sheep, which eat them off wherever found, as exception- 

 ally nutritious and dainty morsels. Under these circumstances, the 

 subterranean clover has learned to produce small heads of bloom, 

 pressed close to the ground, in which only the outer flowers are 

 perfect and fertile, while the inner ones are transformed into tiny, 

 wriggling corkscrews. As soon as the fertile flowers have begun 

 to set their seed, by the kind aid of the bees, the whole stem 

 bends downward, automatically, of its own accord ; the little cork- 

 screws then worm their way into the turf beneath ; and the pods 

 ripen and mature in the actual soil itself, where no prying ewe can 

 poke an inquisitive nose to grub them up and devour them. 

 Cases like this point in certain ways to the absolute high-water- 

 mark of vegetable ingenuity : they go nearest of all in the juant- 

 world to the similitude of conscious animal intelligence. Corn- 

 hill Magazine. 



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SKETCH OF GEORGE CATLIN. 



GEORGE CATLIN'S work was not directly scientific, but 

 rather artistic. It was inspired, nevertheless, by a scientific 

 motive ; and it has resulted in leaving to the world the fullest 

 and most various records that it has, in picture and written de- 

 scription, of the aboriginal tribes of both Americas, as they were 

 before their customs and ideas were modified by civilization, or 

 they were contaminated by white influences a most precious col- 

 lection of original material for future anthropologists to study. 



George Catlin was born in Wilkesbarre, Pa., July 26, 1796, 

 and died in Jersey City, K J., December 23, 1872. He was de- 

 scended from a family who " came over with the Conqueror," his 

 ancestor of that period having been recorded in Domesday Book 

 as possessing in 1087 two knights' fees of land in Kent. The Cat- 



