AN OUTLINE OF PIIYTOBIOLOGY. 



IV. Suggestions for the Study of Plant Locomotion 

 BY Local Botanists. 



From the foregoing outline, Avhieli is intended to be 

 suggestive rather than exhaustive, it will be perceived 

 that in plant locomotion, local botanists have a most 

 attractive and profitable field for study. There is oppor- 

 tunity for a great amount of original work in it. These 

 questions have been much studied in Europe, but very 

 little in this countiy, and it is needful that every species 

 shall be examined here, whether studied elsewhere or not. 



The student may start with the assumption that 

 every plant has some mode of locomotion ; his task is 

 simply to discover what that is. To do so he has only 

 to watch closely enough the plant especially as it passes 

 from flower to fruit. Then secondly, it will help him if he 

 studies the locomotive agencies and observes what plants 

 are moved by them. He should, for example, watch the 

 berries to see what animals eat them, and the birds to see 

 what berries they eat. The seeds floating on water or 

 driven along the roads by wind, or which cling to his 

 clothing or the fur of animals, or (if he be also an 

 ornithologist,) which occur on the feet or in the stomachs 

 of birds should be collected and identified. To aid in this 

 latter work, he should make collections of seeds and 

 fruits of our water plants ; indeed our natural history 

 societies should make such collections as a part of their 

 museums. A collection of seeds and fruits of native 

 plants arranged according to agencies of locomotion 

 would be most instructive and interesting as well as 

 valuable for comparison. The botanist who would 

 undertake as his specialty to work out the locomotion of 

 every plant in a given district and to make a collection 

 of seeds and fruits to illustrate it would have a no less 

 interesting and serviceable specialty than he who works 



