NATURE LORE 



makeshifts, and we like to know how it is with our 

 near or distant kin among the humbler orders. They 

 are ourselves not yet come to consciousness and to 

 the elective franchise. When the burr of the bur- 

 dock, reaching forth its arms for such a chance, 

 seizes on to your coat-tail, take your pocket-glass 

 and examine the minute hooks that tip the ends of 

 the seed-scales. They fish for you and your dog and 

 sheep and cow, and they catch you, not with one 

 hook, but with twenty or fifty, all at the same time. 

 But in this case it is not the fish that is caught, but 

 the fisherman. The plan of this fisherman is to go 

 right along with his captor, the farther the better, 

 and plant his progeny in a new territory. He lets go 

 his hold upon the parent plant at a mere touch, but 

 the touch gives him all the hold he wants. The 

 hooks are fine and hard, like minute, sharp horns, 

 not too much bent, — that would defeat the end, — 

 and perfectly smooth and finished. Instead of hooks, 

 the weed called "bidens" has the teeth or prongs 

 armed with barbs like a fish-hook, many of them on 

 each prong. They are quite as sure a trap as the 

 hooks of the burdock. Nature never fails to perfect 

 her device. Natural selection attends to that. Her 

 traps, her wings, her springs, her balloons, always 

 work. The wings of the maple keys, the ash, and the 

 linden are all different, but they all work. 



Nature seems partial to the burdock. What extra 

 pains she seems to have taken to perpetuate this 



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