32 THE NATURE-STUDY OF PLANTS 
are as full of latex as the adults, but as a general rule 
we look in vain for any special protective device. 
Perhaps we have not looked in the right way yet, for 
seedlings present to the curious many features which, 
were their significance understood, might lead us to 
modify our views. 
However that may be there is a more subtle way 
in which protection is afforded, not to the individual 
seedling, but to the species. I mean the immense 
numbers in which they are produced. Plants of one 
sort or another ripen seeds in hundreds, thousands, 
tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands 
or more; that is a fact about which we can easily 
satisfy ourselves by watching a single individual during 
a single season. If we count the seeds in one of the 
long pods of a Wallflower or Stock, and then the 
number of pods formed by the end of the year, we shall 
be astonished at the total, even if we take no 
trouble about selecting the most vigorous individual 
that we ean find. 
Let us consider one that produces a modest 
thousand, and let us remember that in order to keep 
the number of the species constant only one plant is 
needed to replace every one that dies. Let us suppose 
that not more than one per cent. of its thousand 
seeds produces a seedling, even so we shall have ten 
youngsters and nine of them may be eaten without 
doing any harm in the direction of reducing numerical 
strength, even if the parent should die from one cause 
or another. 
Should the species happen to be an annual or a 
biennial the parent will die; but if it be one of the many 
perennials of our Flora the chances are that it will 
not, and then the one seed that has triumphed over its 
