NEWS OF SPRING 



and found it again. Schopenhauer, in his treatise Ueber den 

 Willen in der Natur, in the chapter devoted to the physiology 

 of plants, recapitulates on this point and on many others a host 

 of observations and experiments which it would take too long 

 to set out here. I therefore refer the reader to this chapter, 

 where he will find numerous sources and references mentioned. 

 Need I add that, in the past sixty or seventy years, these 

 sources have been strangely multiplied and that, moreover, 

 the subject is almost inexhaustible? 



Among so many different inventions, artifices and pre- 

 cautions, let us quote also, by way of example, the foresight 

 displayed by the Hyoseris radiata, or Starry Swine's-succory, 

 a little yellow-flowered plant, not unlike the Dandelion and 

 often found on old walls along the Riviera. In order to en- 

 sure both the dissemination and the stability of its race, it 

 bears at one and the same time two kinds of seeds: the first 

 are easily detached and are furnished with wings wherewith 

 to abandon themselves to the wind, while the others have no 

 wings, remain captive in the inflorescence and are set free only 

 when the flowers decay. 



The case of the Xanthium spinosum, or Spiny Xanthium, 

 shows us how well-conceived and effective certain systems of 



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