NEWS OF SPRING 



markable screws are of no use to them: they could act only 

 if they fell from a certain height, from the top of some lofty 

 tree or tall Graminea; but, constructed as they are on the level 

 of the grass, they have hardly taken a quarter of a turn before 

 already they touch the ground. We have here a curious in- 

 stance of the mistakes, the gropings, the experiments and the 

 frequent little miscalculations of nature; for only those who 

 have studied nature but very little will maintain that she 

 never errs. 



Let us observe, in passing, that other varieties of the 

 Lucern (not to speak of the Clover, another papilionaceous 

 Leguminosa, almost identical with that of which we are now 

 speaking) have not adopted this flying apparatus, but keep to 

 the primitive methods of the pod. In one of them, the 

 Medicago aurantiaca, we very clearly perceive the transition 

 from the twisted pod to the screw. Another variety, the 

 Medicago scutellata, or Snail-medick, rounds its screw in the 

 form of a ball and so on. It would seem, therefore, that we 

 are assisting at the fascinating spectacle of a sort of work of 

 invention, at the attempts of a family that has not yet settled 

 its destiny and is seeking for the best way to ensure its future. 

 Was it not, perhaps, in the course of this search that, having 



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