280 THE BIOLOGY OF THE SEASONS 



biological fact which the seed-scattering in Autumn brings 

 home to us is the prodigality and wastefulness of life such 

 a small proportion of the scattered seeds have any future. As 

 Tennyson said, Nature is "so careless of the single life " ; 

 " of fifty," or, as he afterwards suggested, " of myriad seeds, 

 she often brings but one to bear." In spite of all the neat 

 and effective adaptations, it must be said of a large number 

 of species that they succeed not because they are strong, but 

 because they are many. Wallace quotes Kerner to the 

 effect that a common British weed (Sisymbrium sophia) 

 often has three-quarters of a million seeds ; if all grew to 

 maturity for only three years the whole of the land-surface 

 of the globe would not hold them. 



