CHAPTER VIII 



SEEDS 

 "Here's a state of things! Here's a pretty state of things !" 



UNDER each species of flowers described, 

 I have said something about the plant- 

 ing and gathering of the seeds, but I 

 wish to say here some further words upon the 

 general subject. 



In nature a flower when its seeds are ripened 

 drops them upon the soil, where they germinate 

 at the opening of another season, and from them 

 plants spring up which in turn bloom and again 

 produce seed. Under ordinary circumstances, 

 then, the proper time to plant all seed would be 

 in the fall, as nature plants them ; and this rule 

 would be invariable if all the flowers we attempted 

 to grow were natives of the same sort of climate 

 that we have in our own gardens. But the bota- 

 nist has brought flowers to us from all over the 

 world, and we are attempting to grow plants 



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