FIVE CONSPICUOUS PLANT FAMILIES. 19 



it, we will probably find that we are tipped in the scale of its 

 favour. 



We must first resign a natural feeling of resentment at its 

 aggressiveness and its habit of flaunting itself from every 

 available space. Its children, we must remember, have been 

 a little neglected in education and know no better. They 

 arrive at a season of the year when the dear preacher 

 has retired from his pulpit and they have not the advantage of 

 hearing his good doctrine. The violet is busy rooting its run- 

 ners for the next season's growth and no longer raises its head 

 to teach them about modesty. So being born with rather bold 

 tastes, the poor composites think that they are doing quite a 

 fine thing in puffing themselves up and topping over everything. 



If they were much spoken about in the good old-fashioned 

 times it must have been with the expression that there was not a 

 lazy hair in one of their heads. The energetic way in which 

 they set about dispersing their seeds is truly wonderful, and, as 

 has been already hinted at, their moral character not being 

 fully developed, they have no compunction whatever in using 

 some very extraordinary means. But this might possibly be 

 explained by their agreeing with Loyola in doctrine. The un- 

 kind way many of them have of covering sheep, the only animal 

 without a weapon of defense, with their hooked fruits is alluded 

 to in this connection. 



To those that complain of their downright maliciousness in 

 retaliation for the hay fever, the composites answer calmly : 

 " We are a family that does not invite intimacy. View us from 

 a distance, en masse^ and many of our failings will be over- 

 looked." Evidently this lesson of avoiding familiarity is what 

 they wish us to learn. 



And who does not delight in the fields that are radiant with 

 their rich autumn colouring? They visit the earth when the 

 more delicate blossoms have passed bloom, and they find 

 things dry and dusty, showing the wear and tear of the summer. 

 Then what can be more natural than that they should say to 



