THE MASTER INSTINCT 



Behold the birds building their nests in spring; 

 how absorbed, how persistent they are! How al- 

 most impossible it is to defeat or discourage them! 

 Any one who has tried to prevent English sparrows 

 from breeding on his premises soon learns what a 

 difficult task he has undertaken. Equally, any one 

 who charges himself to see to it that no burdocks or 

 red-root, or other troublesome weeds, mature their 

 seeds on his farm or about his grounds, finds out 

 what enterprise and hardihood he is trying to thwart. 

 Cut the plebeian burdock down within a few inches 

 of the ground and keep it cut down, shorn of all its 

 big leaves, and yet in August or September, without 

 the support of any foliage, it will push out and de- 

 velop burs in the axils of its old leaves. I have seen 

 masses of burs thus form about the stem half as 

 large as one's fist. The plant was making a last and 

 supreme effort to perpetuate itself. Most garden 

 weeds behave in the same way. As the summer 

 nears its end, and their earlier efforts to form seeds 

 have been thwarted, they seem to become alarmed, 

 and to make a last heroic effort, probably drawing 

 upon the last grain of material stored in the root and 

 stalk to develop the precious germ. 



Fruit-trees, starved or in an unhealthy condition, 

 seem to be seized with the same alarm and overload 

 themselves with small, inferior fruit. Is it not no- 

 torious that men and women suffering from certain 

 slow, wasting diseases are exceptionally prolific? On 

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