252 Seed-Scattering 



to have planted with trees, though he was quite at a 

 loss how to accomplish it. For, as the place was 

 simply inaccessible, no one could climb up, either to 

 sow seeds or to plant saplings. The Duke mentioned 

 his difficulty to Nasmyth, and he, noticing a pair of 

 small cannon in front of the castle, ordered a number 

 of tin canisters, filled them with suitable seeds, and 

 fired them from the guns up the high face of the crag, 

 where they burst, and scattered their contents in all 

 directions. Some few years later there were trees 

 flourishing luxuriantly in all the recesses of the cliff. 



Plants cannot perhaps shoot their seeds quite so 

 effectually as this, but in many the seed-vessels split 

 with so much of an explosion that the seeds are dis- 

 charged to distances which, at all events, remove them 

 from the danger of being squeezed to death in a crowd. 

 The Touch-me-not balsam is one of these. But the 

 Sand-box tree of Barbadoes is much more energetic. 

 Its fruit is rather like a small melon in shape, but hard 

 and woody, and when ripe it bursts with a loud report. 

 One of these — dried very gradually in the hope of its 

 remaining intact — exploded nine months after it was 

 gathered, and so violently as to break the wooden box 

 in which it was kept quite to pieces. The seeds were 

 scattered in all directions, but would of course have 

 been carried very much further had they been uncon- 

 fined. 



The fruit of the squirting cucumber has to be 

 bound round with copper-wire when ripe, to prevent 

 its shooting out its seeds. 



The pods of the Chinese wistaria also explode with 

 a sharp, loud report, and the seeds may be carried at 

 least thirty feet; while those of the American wych- 



