Dis] AND SYMBOLS. 89 



Discretion is the Better Part of Valour. 



In the forests of Tartary and South America, says Lord 

 Brougham, where the wild horse is gregarious, there are herds 

 of five or six hundred, which, being ill prepared for fighting, 

 or indeed for any sort of resistance, and knowing that their 

 safety is in flight, when they sleep appoint one in rotation who 

 acts as sentinel while the rest are asleep. If a man approaches, 

 the sentinel walks towards him, as if to reconnoitre and see 

 whether he may be deterred from coming near ; if the man con- 

 tinues, he neighs aloud and in a peculiar tone, which rouses the 

 herd, and all gallop away, the sentinel bringing up the rear. 

 Nothing can be more judicious or rational than this arrangement, 

 simple as it is. R. 



Unconscious Disseminators. 



One of the most extraordinary of microscopic plants is the 

 Achlya prolifera, whose soft silky threads may sometimes be 

 seen adhering to the surface of gold-fishes, and covering them, 

 as it were, with a whitish slime. This appearance is generally 

 looked upon as a species of decay or consumption in the animal 

 itself, and not as an external clothing of parasitic plants. It is, 

 however, a true vegetable growth, each individual consisting of 

 a single filament with a minute pear-shaped ball on the top 

 containing numerous grains, which are the seeds or embryos of 

 future plants. The unconscious fish is the means of their dis- 

 semination, and they may be carried by him unwittingly into 

 places where no such plants ever grew before. Birds unknow- 

 ingly often carry seeds to great distances ; so do the winds. 

 But the methods by which nature uses unconscious agents for 

 the dissemination of seeds is not more remarkable than the 

 processes by which ideas get scattered throughout the human, 

 race. A falling apple carries with it a suggestion respect- 

 ing the law of gravitation. The failure of a quadruped carries 

 with it notions of better mechanical locomotion. A tea-kettle 

 sings a song which tells of the application of steam. Balaam's 

 ass even has a communication to make. In a thousand ways 

 all sorts of things and events are used as the unconscious agents 



