INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS 



dissemination can be. This Xanthium is a hideous weed, bris- 

 tling with savage prickles. Not long ago, it was unknown in 

 Western Europe and no one, naturally, had dreamt of accli- 

 matizing it. It owes its conquest to the hooks which finish off 

 the capsules of its fruits and which cling to the fleece of the 

 animals. A native of Russia, it came to us in bales of wool 

 imported from the distant steppes of Muscovy; and one might 

 follow on the map the stages of this great emigrant which has 

 annexed a new world. 



The Silene Italica, or Italian Catchfly, a simple little 

 white flower, found in abundance under the olive-trees, has 

 set its thought working in another direction. Apparently very 

 timorous, very susceptible, to avoid the visits of importunate 

 and indelicate insects it furnishes its stalks with glandular 

 hairs, whence oozes a viscid fluid in which the parasites are 

 caught with such success that the peasants of the South use 

 the plant as a fly-catcher in their houses. Certain kinds of 

 Catchflies, moreover, have ingeniously simplified the system. 

 Dreading the ants in particular, they discovered that it was 

 enough to place a wide viscid ring under the node of each 

 stalk in order to ward them off. This is exactly what our 

 gardeners do when they draw a circle of tar around the 



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