302 



AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE. 



some of the family, which crush and 

 absorb the largest gum trees within their 

 snake-like limbs. The origin of these trees 

 may arise from the deposit of a single seed, 

 small as that of a mustard seed, in the fork 

 of a gigantic gum, far up. The fig seed 

 germinates there, sends out thread like 

 feelers or root fibres, which thicken and grow 

 strong from what they gather in from the 

 host plant and the air. In a brief time the 

 tiny fibre becomes a strong rope-like sub- 

 stance, which reaches the earth, roots there, 

 and swells and grows strong until, with the 

 aid of other limbs, formed in the same 

 manner, the great gum tree is surrounded, 

 and is absorbed by the fig. 



Why Should Plants Live on Animal 

 Matter ? In some cases the reason is very evi- 

 dent : There is not enough vegetable food in the soil where 

 they are to support them. This is the case with a very 

 curious family common enough in Australia, the Drosera of 

 botanists, the sundews of gardeners. What a tale they 

 tell the observing that the soil is too poor, for some 

 reason or other, to support vegetable life sufficiently for 

 useful purposes. The definition, that " plants are 

 organisms that remain stationary in and live upon 

 the soil," is disturbed by microscopic and everyday 

 observations. [See illustration Page 303.] 



Seeds Travel. In Autumn, 

 the air is thick at times with 

 seeds, some borne on their own 

 feathery wings, often from very 

 distant places. And other seeds 

 are sent in such masses along 

 the ground by winds that they 

 make immense banks along fences 

 in the pastoral districts, and it is 

 said that railway cuttings have 

 been so filled with these masses, 

 that the trains had to stop till they 



Jumping Seed of Grass. 



