88 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



wings, as in the maple, the sycamore, and the ash. 

 Sometimes they are borne up by light hairs or down, as in 

 the willow, the cotton, and the dandelion. Occasionally 

 even the plant itself supplies the necessary energy ; and 

 of this the small green bittercress growing on the wall 

 by Venlake affords at the present moment an excellent 

 example. Bittercress has long, straight, upright pods, 

 like charlock or cabbage, and it thrives for the most part 

 on dry banks or high open places. When the seeds are 

 ripe the sides of the pod unroll elastically, by the unequal 

 drying of their stringy fibres ; and as they do so they 

 shoot out the little seeds like popguns, and scatter them 

 to a distance of six or seven feet ; as one can easily see 

 by picking an unripe spray and spreading a newspaper 

 on the floor around it when it ripens. Children well 

 know this habit of bittercress, and will press their fingers 

 on the tip of the dry capsules to make them explode ; 

 if they are fully ripe they go off at once with a little 

 bang. Garden balsams do much the same thing a little 

 later in the season. Indeed, there is no plant which 

 does not possess some special plan or other to secure 

 fresh fields and pastures new from time to time ; and to 

 trace these out is another of the pleasures that we 

 countrymen derive from following the epochs of our 

 rustic calendar. Every day brings its manifold changes, 

 and almost all go unsung carent quia vate sacro. The 

 little that one man can put on record is but a tithe or 

 a hundredth part of the infinite variety they display. 



