240 SENECIO VULGARIS. 



feelings in regard to its savoury character. Cows are reputed 

 to eat it, although they do not consider it a luxury. Goats and 

 swine eat it, whilst sheep refuse it. To the feathered race, how- 

 ever, it is a choice morsel. 



" I love to see the little goldfinch pluck 

 The groundsel's feathered seeds, and twit and twit, 

 And soon in bower of apple-blossom perched. 

 Trim his gay suit, and pay us with a song." 

 One of the British species of Ragwort (S. JacobcEci) is said to 

 afford a good and permanent yellow dye for woollen goods. 



Having thus briefly sketched the habits and utility of the 

 genus, we will now confine our attention to the common species of 

 Groundsel, Senecio vulgaris. 



The seeds are of extreme beauty, each plume bearing a single 

 seed. Their number is very great. A single plant may produce 

 from 1 20 to 130 flowers, and each flower from 50 to 60 seeds. 

 This wonderful fertility provides for all losses, whether by tillage or 

 by the depredations of insects, birds, or cattle. Linnaeus calcu- 

 lated that an annual, producing only two seeds in the year, would, 

 if unchecked, establish a million plants in twenty years. What, 

 then, would be the increase of a plant which produces 6,500 

 seeds in one season ? Darwin, in his " Origin of Species," relates 

 an experiment to prove the destruction of seedling plants by slugs 

 and insects. On a piece of ground 3 feet long and 2 feet wide, 

 dug and cleared for the purpose, he marked and counted all the 

 seedlings of our native plants as they made their appearance, and 

 out of 357 so marked, 295 were destroyed. The rich harvests of 

 Groundsel every year arise, therefore, from the immense seed- 

 bearing properties of these plants. But there is yet another 

 powerful agent at work to prevent the extirpation of the species, 

 and this is self-fertiUsation, and by this I simply mean fertifisation 

 without the aid of wind or insects. There is also a system of 

 cross-fertilisation, which will be explained presently. 



From the fact of the flowers of Groundsel having no rays. Sir 

 John Lubbock infers that it is rarely visited by insects. It does 

 not, therefore, depend, as do many others, upon the ex- 

 change of pollen between several plants. Were it to depend on 

 this, the fact of its being in a great measure unvisited by insects 



