1 62 FLO WER-LA ND. 



the little round balls of the harriff (hair rough) 

 clinging to your clothes ? They are its fruits, fur- 

 nished with little hooks (p. 23), so that they stick to 

 you, or to the rabbit or the dog that brushes past 

 them, and are carried off to found elsewhere a new 

 colony of harriff. Hence the common name which 

 has been given them of " cleavers." Perhaps you 

 have been troubled with the larger fruits and stronger 

 hooks of the seed vessels of the hound's tongue 

 (Cynoglossum), a plant with downy leaves and dull 

 red flowers. If you look at these fruits through the 

 microscope (with a low magnifying power), you will 

 see many of the hooks with five spreading teeth 

 curved downwards and inwards. Very formidable 

 they look, and one no longer wonders that they are 

 so difficult to get rid of from one's clothes. 



In some foreign plants the hooks of the " fruits 

 are so large and strong that they are said even 

 to kill lions.. * As these hooked fruits roll about 

 over the dry plains, they sometimes become attached 

 to the lion's skin. "The wretched animal tries to 

 tear them out, and, sometimes getting them into his 

 mouth, perishes miserably." * 



You can find other instances of those hooked fruits 

 in the enchanter's nightshade (circcea), and the hedge 

 parsley (torilis), 



Such are some, and only some, of the ways in 



* Sir John Lubbock, in "Flowers, Fruits, and Leaves." 



