78 THE BOOK OF NATURE STUDY 



Their conspicuousness against the foliage when ripe, their scent 

 and pleasant flavour, attract the animals to eat them. In the 

 intestines of the latter the softer parts are digested and serve as 

 food, but the hard seed or stone withstands the action of the 

 digestive juices, and is passed uninjured in the droppings. This 

 will be at a considerable distance from the parent plant, so that 

 we have in these arrangements a very efficient method of dispersal. 

 The fruits of the Rose, Strawberry, Apple, Ivy, Honeysuckle, 

 and Mistletoe among the plants described are of this nature 



In concluding this brief summary of the way in which fruits 

 and seeds are dispersed mention must be made of human traffic. 

 Many of our common weeds have thus been spread not only locally, 

 but to distant countries, where they have succeeded and spread 

 widely. Such accidental spreading of a plant brings vividly 

 before us the use of the natural arrangements for dispersal, to 

 which the attention of the student should always be directed in 

 examining a plant. 



LIST OF BOOKS. More or less full descriptions of single plants are given in 

 many text- books of Botany. The following works are devoted to this, and will 

 enable the student to extend his work on the lines followed above : Church, 

 Types of Floral Mechanism ; Groom, Trees and their Life Histories ; Schumann, 

 Praktikum fur morphologische und systematische Botanik (this work is not trans- 

 lated, but those who read German will find in it full descriptions of a large number 

 of plants). For further information as to the life of an ordinary plant, and the 

 relation between special conditions of life and the organisation of plants, pollina- 

 tion, seed-dispersal, etc., the student should consult Kerner and Oliver, The 

 Natural History of Plants. The methods of pollination are described in detail 

 in Miiller, The Fertilisation of Flowers, and Knuth, Handbook of Flower Pollination. 

 For identifying British flowering plants, and the study of their classification, 

 one of the following may be used : Johns, Flowers of the Field ; Hooker, The 

 Student's Flora of the British Islands-, Bentham and Hooker, Handbook of the 

 British Flora. 



