108 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



on to the shore during a storm, for I found a small group of 

 the same plant at about the same distance from the lake level 

 near the filtering basin a few years after. 



I will bring these too lengthy notes to a close with a very 

 brief reference to some striking instances of plant distribution 

 which I have noticed around Hamilton during the last thirty- 

 six years. 



The first instance I would refer to is a case where the 

 wind was the agent. In a garden in the east end of the city, 

 some plants of Salsify (vegetable oyster) Tragopagon was 

 allowed to run to seed. These seeds are supplied with a 

 wonderful appendage enabling them to rise in the air like a 

 balloon when the least wind is blowing, and are easily carried 

 to great distances. Some of these seeds alighted on I lie sides of 

 the Port Dover Branch of the Grand Trunk Railway nud 2;rew, 

 and in their turn produced seed which travelled on until in 

 five years after I noticed the first specimens it had established 

 itself in the vicinity of Albion Ravine in one direction. 



Twenty-five years ago in botanizing along the railway to 

 the east of the city I never found a specimen of Melilotus 

 Alba (sweet clover), but about that time the white clover, so 

 sought after b}^ the honey bee, had failed for a year or two, 

 and a well-known bee. keeper bought some seed of the 

 Melilotus and sowed it near the railway embankment as a 

 substitute for the ordinary white clover. The result is that 

 this plant is found for miles along the track, and the bare 

 portions along the mountain side are covered year after year 

 with a luxuriant crop of it, as well as the surrounding fields. 



The late Mr. Wilkins, Principal of the Beamsville High 

 School, told me that between Hamilton and Beamsville on the 

 Grand, Trunk Railway track he had observed and collected 

 eleven species of plants not found growing in this neighbor- 

 hood. He added that they had no doubt been drojjped from 

 freight trains conveying cars of grain from the North-West. 

 Many plants have seeds provided with hooks w^hich enable 

 them to attach themselves to animals, and they are thus 

 carried to considerable distances, while birds devour many 

 seeds and thus drop them sometimes in distant places. 



