MARTYNIAS AND LIONS 



seem likely that seeds and fruits could be carried by birds ; 

 yet Darwin saw that this might possibly be the case. The 

 mud and slime in which so many birds find the small insects 

 which they require is full of seeds. An Austrian botanist, 

 Kerner von Marilaun, examined the mud scraped from the 

 beaks, feathers, and legs of a number of wading and marsh- 

 birds. He found in it the seeds of no less than thirty-one 

 different water and marsh plants (Grasses, Sedges, Toad- 

 rush, etc.). This showed, as is very often the case, that 

 Darwin was the first to discover a very important point. It 

 is also interesting to find that these ugly little freshwater mud 

 and marsh plants are at home almost everywhere, from the 

 Arctic circle to Tierra del Fuego and from Peru to Japan. 



The most extraordinary cases known of sticking fruits and 

 spines are the Martynias and Harpagophytons of South 

 Africa. The fruit is covered by hooked claws, and becomes 

 a regular pest wherever it occurs. Deer, antelopes, and 

 other animals get their hoofs entangled in the fruit, and 

 the wretched creatures have to limp about until the hard 

 thorny fruit is trodden to pieces. Dr. Livingstone says that 

 the fruit gets into the nostrils of grazing animals which 

 cannot possibly remove it themselves, and so have to wait 

 patiently till the herdsman comes to take it out. According 

 to Lord Avebury, lions may sometimes be destroyed by these 

 horrible fruits. When a lion is rolling on the sand, the claws 

 (an inch long) stick in his skin, and when the lion tries to 

 tear it away with his teeth his mouth gets full of the fruits 

 and he cannot eat, and perishes miserably of starvation.^ 



Some of our common British fruits are most perfectly 



planned to stick or entangle themselves in the wool of sheep 



or in people's clothes. These, such as the Goosegrass 



* Ludwig, Biologie d. Pflanzen. 

 258 



