204 MYSTERIES OF THE FLOWERS 



tions of our Leisure Class. Swimming, diving, 

 motoring, flying, shooting, travelling, are some of 

 those in which the plants and their seeds indulge. 

 Let us examine the playful and boisterous man- 

 ners of seed-sowing that have planted a whole con- 

 tinent. We know, of course, that the ripened seeds 

 might fall close about the roots of the parent plant, 

 and grow in a thick mat of a foot or so in diameter 

 where they fell. But the many seedlings would 

 crowd and starve one another, any small local acci- 

 dent would exterminate them all, and any narrow 

 barrier of rock or water or unfavourable soil would 

 completely bar their spreading into new regions. 

 We know that plants have travelled far, for many 

 introduced from Europe — such as the daisies — have 

 swept over fields and mountains to the prairies of 

 the Middle West, where they are now waging a 

 border warfare with native plants there. Suppos- 

 ing that they had come over with the Pilgrims, 

 and had started their migration from the famous 

 Plymouth Rock. Spreading landward at the rate 

 of a foot a year, the farthest limits of their progress 

 would scarcely have reached three hundred feet 

 from the starting-point. If a million years had 

 elapsed since their coming, the same slow means 

 of travel would but have carried them about one 

 hundred and ninety miles. 



