144 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



from the joints or nodes. It is the commonest of all its 

 race- -not in England only, but throughout the globe ; 

 for its winged fruits have been carried to every quarter 

 of the world with seed-corn and clovers. Cut it down, 

 and a new head springs from below the wound ; hack it 

 close to the ground, and the rootstock pushes out a fresh 

 young shoot from an unsuspected corner ; harrow it up 

 bodily, and the seed blows over at harvest-time from all 

 the surrounding fields, just at the right moment for the 

 autumn ploughing. 



For hardiness of constitution it has no equal ; and this 

 is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that universal cross- 

 fertilization has become absolutely certain by the separa- 

 tion of the sexes on different plants. This globular head 

 that I have just swished off has none but stamen-bearing 

 florets ; this other more conical cluster, that I am trying 

 to cut with the aid of my knife and handkerchief, con- 

 tains nothing, on the contrary, but pistils and seeds. 

 Such careful separation of the two elements perfectly 

 insures a good cross in each generation, and so greatly 

 improves the quality of the strain. Add that every stem 

 produces some thirty or forty heads, each containing 

 more than a hundred florets, with winged seeds that fly 

 about everywhere, and can you wonder that thistles are 

 so plentiful ? Even the less developed types, like the 

 melancholy thistle of the Highlands so called from its 

 gracefully nodding or drooping head get on well enough, 

 though that particular species differs from all others in 

 not being prickly, and depends for its defence entirely on 

 its stringy nature. Centaury and corn-bluebottle, too, 

 are others of the same tribe, which have differentiated 

 themselves in less unpleasant ways than the true thistles ; 

 while the common burdock has turned the prickles on 

 its head into small clinging hooks, which help to disperse 



