262 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



cases nature has only been making more careful provision for the future of 

 her favorites. 



She also jirepares the seed for seeking its proper location. Some are armed 

 with hooks and barbs, and chuvs, with parachutes and wings, feathers, elastic 

 springs and coiled shafts, for catching rides and traveling afoot, for flying and 

 floating, jumping and being discharged from bombs, and sent off like rockets. 

 One kind of seed is dischaiged from capsules and has its base tipped with a bit 

 of mucihioe which causes it to adhere to whatever it touches. Take notice 

 that this seed flics out of the hoitom of the capsule, and not the top. Another 

 is grooved curiously so thrt it revolves with a touch. Grass seeds travel by 

 means of barbs on their awns, wliich are also twisted in some cases. Perhaps 

 some of you have as children tried putting a head of rye up your sleeve to see 

 how soon it would come out at your neck. 



Seeds which retain their vitality a long time seem to have been varnished. 

 Spores of fungi cannot be wetted, but float in water. The earth is full of 

 them. I liave put a pinch of earth from my garden in a drop of water and 

 draining it upon glass, found on exploring it with a lens, the spurred spores of 

 corn smut constantly appearing, as well as many others. 



So very careful is nature to keep up the generation of plants that she will 

 vary her methods in unusual cases. The painted corolla will be undeveloped, 

 but the pollen will be furnished and the embryo fertilized and ripened without 

 a failure on the part of the plant if the soil be too poor, or the moisture 

 insufficient. If we decrease the amount of nutrition given to a healthy, 

 vigorous plant that has not heretofore borne fruit, it will immediately form 

 flower buds. A season of moderate dryness is more favorable to the formation 

 of fruit buds than one of excessive moisture. Excessive drought may destroy 

 the fruit, but seldom hinders the growth of buds for the next year. It has 

 usually the contrary elTect. One thing in favor of your fruit belt is the dry 

 weather during Au2:ust and Seotember. 



So well is this known that gardeners sometimes cut off a portion of the roots 

 of trees which grow too much wood. An excess of nutrition will prevent flow- 

 ering. Florists continually cut off their flowers, and as constantly the plant 

 puts out more. Many of our common flowers will bloom all summer if we 

 pick otf the seed vessels before they ripen, but in that case the plant must have 

 no other mode of natural increase, by bulbs or tubers, for most plants have 

 done Lhcir work when the next generation is provided for 



Plants have a power of selecting their food, and seldom make mistakes. To 

 be sure, it docs not matter so much, because it is only the crude material that 

 they take up into the leaves, where all the sifting, and sorting, and manufac- 

 turing is done. If this wei'e not so, it would be useless to graft or bud any 

 tree or plant. AVhat a fruit is to be depends entirely on the leaves. The sap 

 that comes down from the leaves makes the whole plant or tree, and its blos- 

 soms iind li'uit. The stock cannot jiossibly affect the graft, but the graft does 

 afl'ect the stock more or less. A plant with variegated foliage has been grafted 

 upon one of its own kind with plain foliage, and the foliage of the stock 

 bccajne niuLtled, and when the graft was reversed the foliage become plain. 

 It must necessarily be so, since all the saj) is prepared in the leaves. Trees 

 that bear fruit of large size or great quantity, must have a full bushy top, with 

 large leafage, or the delicate work of ti-ansniitting the gases of water and the 

 air into starch and tiien into susfar, mixin^]: and flavorinaj v/ith malic acid in 

 one, citric acid in anotiier, cannot go on. 



The loots have a curious sensitiveness to the presence of gases, whether in 



