PROTECTION 31 
know the Petty Spurge as a troublesome weed, and one 
has only to break it to see the white juice that abounds 
in its tissues and which, from its 
resemblance in colour to milk, is 
known as latex. The resemblance, 
however, is entirely deceptive, for 
there is nothing less like milk in 
taste and other properties than the 
acrid, burning, poisonous latex of 
the Spurges, and the immunity 
from being eaten, which they enjoy, 
is very easily observed in any garden 
where they are found as weeds. All 
the same Spurges contribute some- Fic. 12.—Seedling of 
thing to the general well-being, for Remedy PpUrEe. 
the caterpillars of the Spurge Hawk G23 Gateieabne 
Moth go to them for food. 
Latex occurs in many other plants, as, for example, 
in Dandelions, Wild Lettuces, and Poppies. In the 
Yellow Horned poppy it is orange instead of white; 
and in the Wild Lettuce it is about as nasty in every 
way as one could wish. But there are all sorts of 
latex, and we must in justice remember that it provides 
us, from the tropics, with rubber. 
A word must be said here about the protective 
devices against being eaten that are possessed by seed- 
lings. We might expect that tender infancy would 
have its special safeguards, for we know that in the 
higher animal world parental care of the young is 
sometimes as touching as the devotion of the human 
mother; even in the insect world, as unspeakable 
in its customs as the Turk, the earwig looks after its 
offspring, but there is no trace of any such virtue in 
the vegetable world. It is true that seedling Spurges 
D 

