252 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



ject are forced on one's attention as one walks 

 abroad. The rowans have been particularly beau- 

 tiful. Many trees have shown red from crown to 

 lowest branch. Probably nobody ever tried to 

 count the berries on a rowan-tree, but it is well 

 within the mark to say that they often run in 

 numbers into the hundreds of thousands. Yet the 

 rowan is quite a third-rate success in spreading 

 itself, and it is doubtful if any particular rowan- 

 tree has a progeny of one in half a century. In 

 that time it has produced millions of seed, pro- 

 vided the means of covering each with an alluring 

 pulpy flesh, all to this little end. It is difficult 

 to resist the opinion that it would have done as 

 well if it had practised the hardest economy, and 

 thrown all its seeds from it naked and unadorned. 

 And the rowan is only exceptional in its con- 

 spicuousness. I have just been through a little 

 wood of alders skirting a river. The undergrowth 

 is heavy, its most notable components being plants 

 of the umbel family, particularly cow parsley. In 

 a narrow quarter of a mile the plants of this 

 class are many thousand strong, each thrusting up 

 its tall stalk headed with seed. Passing along 

 you can fill both hands with seed at every step, 

 and are tempted to play the part of the sower. 

 If all the united seed produced in this little strip of 

 ground were collected, it would suffice to sow cow 

 parsley over a whole county. But it is a practical 

 certainty that not one seed in this mighty provision 

 will ever get beyond the wood in which it has 

 been produced, and that there will be no more 

 umbels next year than there have been this year. 



