of 



secure wind assistance in pushing afar its long, 

 purplish pods with their heavy beanlike seeds. 

 This pod is not only flattened but crooked and 

 slightly twisted. Dropping from the tree in 

 midwinter, it often lands upon crusted snow. 

 Here on windy days it becomes a kind of crude 

 ice-boat and goes skimming along before the 

 wind; with its flattened, twisted surface it ever 

 presents a boosting-surface to the breeze. 



The ironwood tree launches its seeds each 

 seated in the prow of a tiny boat, which floats 

 or careers away upon the invisible ocean of air, 

 sinking, after a rudderless voyage, to the earth. 

 The attachment to some seeds is bladder- or 

 balloon-like; tied helplessly to this, the seed is 

 cast forth briefly to wander with the wandering 

 winds. 



The linden, or basswood, tree uses a mono- 

 plane for buoyancy. The basswood attaches or 

 suspends a number of seeds by slender threads 

 to the centre of a leaf; in autumn when this 

 falls it resists gravity for a time and ofttimes 

 with its clinging cargo alights far from the tree 

 which sent it forth. 



300 



