LIFE-HISTORY OF THE HERB ROBERT 121 
that I watched at home, and by no means a fine one, 
produced its 200th blossom on August 7; during 
the following week I counted twenty-three more, and 
it went on at the rate of about two a day until the 
middle of September. 
In some few cases the seeds were eaten before they 
were ripe by the small yellow grub already mentioned, 
but my plant must have managed a family of quite 
fifteen hundred between the end of April and the 
beginning of October, that is in five months, and, 
compared with others which grew in more favourable 
places, this was a small one, for I had it in a pot ona 
window-ledge where it was not well off for root-room 
or moisture in the soil. 
We have just seen how the Herb Robert protects 
and takes care of its unborn children until the fruit 
is ripe, and now we-must find out what it does to 
give them a good start in life, how it provides for the 
earliest growing days of the little plant inside the 
seed, and how it arranges for the seeds to be dropped 
far and wide so as to give them a chance of finding 
a suitable spot upon which to germinate. 
It frequently happens in the vegetable world that 
the seed contains not only the plantlet, but also a 
considerable store of food upon which the seedling 
ean draw while it is making its roots and foliage. 
With the Cranesbills, however, things are arranged 
differently: there is very little reserve, but the 
cotyledons are large and they very quickly set about 
making food; moreover, they last a long time and 
increase in size as they grow older. 
But the question of greater interest is, how do the 
seeds get dispersed ? We know already that land 
plants rely very largely in this matter upon the 
