8 THE CYCLAMEN 



in nature. One could not be in his company long 

 without learning something. It is good to remember 

 how we sometimes played truant together from the 

 House of Commons and went botanising in the Kent 

 marshes. His gentle way of imparting information 

 met on one occasion with a humorous rejoinder. He 

 told me how he was shooting somewhere and was 

 posted with his loader at the end of a cover, waiting 

 the approach of the line of beaters. There was a heap 

 of flints by the roadside, and he asked his loader 

 whether he knew how those stones were made. 



' Well, sir,' replied the man, ' I 'spect they growed, 

 same as 'taturs.' 



' But,' said Lubbock, ' if you were to watch these 

 stones for twenty years, they would get no bigger.' 



' No, sir,' returned the other, ' same as 'taturs, sure 

 enough; you takes 'em out o' the ground and they 

 stops growin'.' 



III 



Contrivances for the dispersal of seed are so manifold, 

 The so ingenious and so effective in the majority 



cyclamen 1 o f pl an t s , that one cannot but be puzzled by 

 the mechanism of the various species of cyclamen, 

 which almost seems to have been devised as a hindrance 

 to dispersal. No sooner is fertilisation accomplished 

 and the flower fades away than the peduncle or foot 

 stalk coils itself into a tight spiral, tucking away the fruit, 



1 Reference in this note is only to the species of cyclamen which are 

 hardy in the British climate. With the behaviour of florists' varieties 

 of the tender G. Persicum 1 am not able to speak from observation. 



