JULY FLOWERS, 119 



close spiral, so that it looks more like a little brown ball 

 than a common pea-pod. All round the edge this ball 

 is thickly defended by double rows of stout hooked 

 prickles, which naturally make it about as unpleasant 

 to the mouths of the cattle as a burr or a thistle. The 

 subterranean clover is another pea-flower, which solves 

 the same problem in a different way by burying its ow^n 

 seeds beneath the sod. And this wee creeping bird's- 

 foot, which, like many of its small congeners, has to fear 

 the birds more than the sheep or cattle, avoids opening 

 its pod to shed its tiny beans by making it solid all 

 round, and then dropping off, as it ripens, into little 

 articulated pieces, each containing a single seed. The 

 pod, in fact, divides at the joints between the beans, and 

 .so disappoints the birds, who always wait in other cases 

 till the valves burst open. Wild radish, or 'jointed 

 charlock ' as the farmers call it, has independently 

 adopted the selfsame plan in the widely different family 

 of the cresses. As to peculiarities in the number and 

 shape of the seeds themselves, the hairiness or smoothness 

 of the pods, the colour and consistency of their coverings 

 and so forth — among the peaflowers alone they are prac- 

 tically innumerable ; and each has its own definite pur- 

 pose, generally discoverable in the end by a little careful 

 observation and minute comparison. 



The leaves, again, vary immensely, though always 

 strictly by derivation from a single ideal or ancestral 

 type. The typical leaf of the pea-kind has a central 

 stalk, with little leaflets arranged in opposite pairs along 

 its course, and a similar terminal leaflet at the end. This 

 is the form the foliage still assumes in lady's-fingers, 

 bird's-foot, and many other species. But in the clovers, 



