38 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



sycamore, will acknowledge the carrying power of the seed's 

 wings. You will find, except in the very big tree, rather 

 fewer seedlings under the spread of the boughs than just 

 beyond ; and if left alone they would very soon grow into a 

 wood. It is good for the tree that the progeny should be 

 free from the circle of the parent's boughs. But Nature's 

 ways do not always work to perfection. The seed of many 

 trees falls directly to the ground unless it is carried away by 

 birds or other animals. Though even here it might be 

 possible to make out a Darwinian case. In the beech and 

 the nut whose seeds fall vertically, the trees have the 

 particular faculty of flourishing in shade and close juxta- 

 position. 



Such are the plain and obvious, almost insistent, examples 

 of seed dispersing itself over the land. We have all noticed 

 the spinning seeds of sycamore and hornbeam and ash. 

 We have all noticed some in summer, some in autumn 

 thistle-down and dandelion and garden anemone and ground- 

 sel and sallow, which will blow in quantities into the railway 

 carriages, and poplar seed flying like little moths about town 

 and country. And the success of this sowing is witnessed in 

 the multiplying of some of the plants. Nothing is more 

 noticeable over England within the last generation than the 

 spread of the wild clematis. Its seeds are carried on aigrette 

 plumes which float almost horizontally over the ground, 

 where they are rolled along when they fall. So it happens 

 that the seed takes root wherever an obstruction is, and the 

 clematis finds the support it needs. A curious sight in many 

 places is offered by the feathering of the seed over the dome 

 of a leafless tree, that looks from a distance as if covered with 

 white flower. The writer was never more surprised at the 

 effect than walking one late autumn day in a wild park at 

 Clifton. The grass is there dotted plentifully with may 



