44 ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND. 



seeds always do it by the simple device of wings or 

 feathery projections. Every variety of plan or dodge or 

 expedient has been adopted in turn to secure the self- 

 same end ; and provided ouly it succeeds in securing it, 

 any variety of them all is equally satisfactory. One 

 might parallel it with the case of hatching birds' eggs. 

 Most birds sit upon their eggs themselves, and supply 

 the necessary warmth from their own bodies. But any 

 alternative plan that attains the same end does just as 

 well. The felonious cuckoo drops her foundlings un- 

 awares in another bird's nest : the ostrich trusts her 

 unhatched offspring to the heat of the burning desert 

 sand : and the Australian brush-turkeys, with vicarious 

 maternal instinct, collect great mounds of decaying and 

 fermenting leaves and rubbish, in which they deposit 

 their eggs to be artificially incubated, as it were, by the 

 slow heat generated in the process of putrefaction. Just 

 in the same way, we shall see in the case of seeds that 

 any method of dispersion will serve the plant's purpose 

 equally well, provided only it succeeds in carrying a few 

 of the young seedlings to a proper place in which they 

 may start fair at last in the struggle for existence. 



As in the case of the fertilization of flowers, so in that 

 of the dispersal of seeds, there are two main ways in 

 which the work is effected by animals and by wind- 

 power. I will not insult the intelligence of the reader at 

 the present time of day by telling him that pollen is 

 usually transferred from blossom to blossom in one or 

 other of these two chief ways it is carried on the heads 

 or bodies of bees and other honey-seeking insects, or else 

 it is wafted on the wings of the wind to the sensitive 



