xni LETTERS TO MARCO 85 



clumps of small plants, such as Sedums or 

 Aubrietias. 



I need not say that if the worms and snails, 

 are busy, the birds also are very hard at it 

 foraging in every direction. The fish also 

 seem very ravenous just now, a fisherman 

 telling me that yesterday he had had eight 

 runs from jack in about an hour and a half, 

 though he only landed one. 



In my last letter I meant to have told you 

 about the seeds of the stork's-bill. These 

 seeds have a long beak, which is spirally 

 twisted ; there are bristles underneath it, and 

 if one is slightly wetted and placed on the 

 ground it will move along an inch or two. 

 The spiral expands and uncurls itself with the 

 damp, and this action, together with the little 

 bristles, sends the thing along : a peculiar pro- 

 perty of the seed, which allows it, as the 

 weather changes from damp to dry, to move 

 along on the ground a good distance from the 

 parent plant. 



The damp weather has caused plentiful 



