Seed-Scattering 217 



miles away — that cross-fertilization with plants at a dis- 

 tance is more beneficial still, the produce being in each 

 case very greatly augmented. 



Such, then, are the strong arguments in favor of 

 Nature's plan of scattering her seed far and wide: the 

 plants gain change of air and change of soil; competition 

 is less keen, cross-fertilization is promoted; and when 

 driven by stress of circumstances from one neighborhood, 

 they are able to gain a settlement in another. 



Winds, waves, birds, beasts, fishes, and even man him- 

 self, are all pressed into the plant's service, and made to 

 act as seed-carriers. But in some cases the plant itself 

 acts, and acts alone, sending her seeds to quite consider- 

 able distances. 



Many years ago, there was a certain bare, rocky craig 

 near Dunkeld, which the Duke of Athole desired to have 

 planted with trees, though he was quite at a loss how to 

 accomplish it. For as the place was simply inaccessible, 

 no one could chmb up, either to sow seeds or to plant 

 saplings. The Duke mentioned his difficulty to Nasmyth, 

 and he, noticing a pair of small cannon in front of the 

 castle, ordered a number of tin canisters, filled them with 

 suitable seeds, and fired them from the guns up the high 

 face of the crag, where they burst, and scattered their 

 contents in all directions. Some few years later there 

 were trees flourishing luxuriantly in all the recesses of the 

 cHff. 



Plants cannot perhaps shoot their seeds quite so eftec- 

 tually as this, but in many the seed-vessels split with so 

 much of an explosion that the seeds are discharged to dis- 

 tances which, at all events, remove them from the danger 

 of being squeezed to death in a crowd. The touch-me-not 



