152 THE NATURE-STUDY OF PLANTS 
sticks out of the soil almost upright, at any rate for 
a few days, and then rots off. 
On the only occasion that I sowed some of them 
twenty-eight days elapsed before the cotyledons 
appeared. I regret to add that the seedlings themselves 
disappeared very soon; they were eaten down to the 
ground, but here again I did not succeed in catching 
the culprit in the act. I have no doubt, however, 
that it was once more the Garden Snail, who usually 
leaves slime tracks behind him by way of evidence ; 
but be that as it may, not a single seedling of the 
large number that I once had growing in the garden 
survived until the autumn. The first one appeared 
early in July, by the end of September all of them 
had been devoured, and thanks to the molluses I am 
not likely to be worried with the Storksbill as a garden 
weed. My chief horticultural foe is vastly more 
abundant in my borders than in the places where 
the Storksbill grows wild, but on the other hand other 
kinds of snail may resort to it for a meal; so far, 
however, I have not made the necessary observations 
and experiments with this plant. I may mention 
in this connection that I have never seen it victimised 
by fungal disease; it is known, however, that it provides 
some sustenance to the larval world, but like the rest 
of its relatives it seems to come off rather cheaply in 
this respect 
