334 TlMEHRI. 



them to fresh woods and pastures new. These are mostly 

 weeds of cultivated lands, where such means of convey- 

 ance are frequent. Besides the desmodiums, we con- 

 stantly see and help to distribute at least two other 

 seeds, one of which, a small roundish kind beset with 

 bristling points, something like the iron caltrops that 

 used to be thrown in the way of advancing cavalry, is 

 the fruit of the bur-grass (Cenchrus echinatus) ; the 

 other is more like a small canary-seed enveloped in 

 spiny bracts, and grows on the long thin spikes of the 

 watchman plant (Achyranthes aspera)^ a common weed 

 among grass. This plant is given the jesting name of 

 man-more-than-man, the point of the joke being to 

 get some one to take the long spike in his hand to puzzle 

 over the reason for this strange name, when the ques- 

 tioner gives a practical answer by drawing it smartly 

 through the closed hand and leaving the man phis several 

 little " pimplers" fastened in his fingers. 



Other plants have variously shaped wings to their 

 seeds, so that in their fall from a height they are carried 

 to some distance from the parent tree. One instance of 

 this is the climbing securidaca described above, which 

 has a delicate membranous wing about an inch long to 

 each small seed. But a still prettier and more elabo- 

 rate device is found in the fruit of the handsome 

 Long John trees (Triplaris surinamensis and other 

 species) that adorn many of our roads and gardens. 

 Here the seed is contained in a capsule provided 

 with three brown leaf-like wings or blades, an inch 

 and a half long, the whole on the plan of a small 

 shuttlecock with three feathers. These wings are 

 so bent that the fruit spins rapidly as it falls, and so 



