A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS. 123 



also. They migrate from land to land, sometimes slowly, 

 inch by inch, then again on the wings of the storm. Bot- 

 anists tell us of actual migrations of plants, and a suc- 

 cessive extension of the domain of particular floras, just 

 as we speak of the migration of idioms and races. In- 

 dividual plants, however, travel only as man ought to 

 travel, when they are young. If they have once found 

 a home, they settle quietly down, grow, blossom, and bear 

 fruit. Therefore it is, that plants travel only in the seed. 

 For this purpose, seeds possess often special organs for 

 a long journey through the air. Sometimes they are put, 

 like small bombshells, into little mortars, and fired off 

 with great precision. Thus arise the well-known emerald 

 rings on our greensward, and on the vast prairies of the 

 West, which some ascribe to electricity, whilst the poet 

 loves to see in them traces of the moonlight revels of 

 fairies. The truth is scarcely less poetical. A small cir- 

 cular fungus squats down on a nice bit of turf. It pros- 

 pers and fills with ripening seed. When it matures, it 

 discharges its tiny balls in a circle all around, and then 

 sinks quietly in the ground and dies. Another season, 

 and its place is marked by an abundance of luxuriant 

 grass, feeding upon its remains, whilst around it a whole 

 ring of young fungi have begun to flourish. They die 

 in their turn, and so the circle goes on enlarging and 

 enlarging, shifting rapidly because fungi exhaust the soil 

 soon of all matter necessary for their growth, and closely 

 followed by the rich grass, that fills up their place, and 

 prevents them from ever retracing their steps. 



A similar irritability enables other plants to scatter 



