Seeds and Sowers 265 



their power to cling ; but the rough, round seeds 

 only become tougher as they dry, and last until 

 the following year. The yellow agrimony, which 

 raises its starry spears in July and August among 

 the chequered shadows, sheds abundant conical 

 seeds, capped with fine hooked hairs. Herb bennet, 

 which bears a larger yellow blossom like a garden 

 geum, has a cluster of tapering seeds, each ending 

 in one hook of ample size. Grass seeds fix them- 

 selves firmly with their sharp awns, often toothed 

 like the beak of a prawn. But the plant that gives 

 most trouble to a wandering dog, and will wreathe 

 the head of a straying sheep, like a dumb Ophelia, 

 is the stout and branching burdock. The burrs 

 of this great rhubarb-leaved plant have exceptional 

 powers of adhesion. Once they have well pene- 

 trated a wild animal's coat, it may be weeks or 

 months before it sheds the last hooked fragments 

 on distant soil. If left to wither on the plant, in 

 normal seasons the burrs will slowly break up under 

 the winter frosts and rains, and let fall the seeds 

 in time to shoot in spring. In wet autumns the 

 burr itself may be seen shooting green, like the 

 shocks in the desolate oatfields, forestalling its 

 season. 



Birds play a very important part in the dis- 

 tribution of autumn seeds, and not only of the 

 wild or cultivated berries, which are eagerly 

 devoured by thrushes and many smaller species. 

 Seeds of wild plants such as the yew and elder and 

 mountain-ash, as well as the raspberries and currants 

 of the garden, are often let fall in lofty places, 



