NEWS OF SPRING 



and the Heath. But one of the great masters of vegetable 

 gunnery is the Spurge. The Spurge is an Euphorbiacea of 

 our climes, a tall and fairly ornamented ''weed," which often 

 exceeds the height of a man. I have a branch of Spurge on 

 my table at this moment, steeped in a glass of water. It has 

 trifid, greenish berries, which contain the seeds. From time 

 to time, one of these berries bursts with a loud report; and the 

 seeds, gifted with a prodigious initial velocity, strike the 

 furniture and the walls on every side. If one of them hits 

 your face, you feel as though you had been stung by an in- 

 sect, so extraordinary is the penetrating force of these tiny 

 seeds, each no larger than a pin's head. Examine the berry, 

 look for the springs that give it life: you shall not find the 

 secret of this force, which is as invisible as that of our nerves. 

 The Spanish Broom {Spartium junceum) has not only 

 pods, but flowers fitted with springs. You may have re- 

 marked the wonderful plant. It is the proudest representative 

 of this mighty family of the Brooms. Greedy of life, poor, 

 sober, robust, rejecting no soil, no trial, it forms along the 

 paths and in the mountains of the South huge, tufted balls, 

 sometimes ten feet high, which, between May and June, are 

 covered with a magnificent bloom of pure gold whose per- 



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