of 



hurried through elliptical orbits like comets as 

 they settled to the earth; while innumerable 

 others, as they came rotating down, were re- 

 volving through planetary orbits in this seed- 

 sown field of space. Now and then a number of 

 cones on a fir tree collapsed and precipitated 

 into space a meteoric shower of slow-descending 

 seeds and a hurried zigzag fall of heavier scales. 

 Occasionally on a ridge-top a few of the lighter 

 seeds would come floating upward through an 

 air-chimney as though carried in an invisible 

 smoke-column. 



One windy day I crossed the mountains when 

 a gale was driving millions of low-flying seeds 

 before it. Away they swept down the slope, to 

 whirl widely and flutter over the gulch where the 

 wind-current dashed against the uprising moun- 

 tain beyond. Most of the seeds were flung to the 

 earth along the way or dropped in the bottom of 

 the gulch; a few, however, were carried by the 

 swift uprushing current up and across the moun- 

 tain and at last scattered on the opposite side. 



When the last seed of the year has fallen, how 

 thickly the woodland regions are sown broad- 



304 



