NATURE'S OFFERING FOR SPRING PLANTING 1097 
the level of the mower, and such live on and renew each 
season their ill-fated attempts to rise in the world. The grass 
is full of them— little stubby fellows, each with only two or 
three small leaves that are put out early as if to take advan- 
tage of the leafless condition of the boughs overhead. But 
even such little unpromising stubs, if replanted in a favorable 
place, will make long leafy shoots the first season, and tall 
blossoming shrubs the second season. And if one will look 
about the borders of the lawn, he may find ready for planting 
some ninebarks of a larger growth that have escaped the 
mowing-machine. So one may find wild seedlings of many 
other sorts, such as june-berry and arrowwood and witch- 
hazel and of all the forest trees. 
Trees whose seeds employ special agencies of transporta- 
tion may spring up in anew place. Thus seedlings of plants 
whose fruits are eaten by birds are found about the open 
places where the birds perch; and those from seeds that are 
carried by water may congregate along shores and beaches. 
On sand-bars in stream or lake, one often sees thousands of 
little cottonwoods, willows, maples or sycamores, lined up 
along the shore as in a single extended nursery-row. 
It is a rough-and-tumble world into which wildwood 
seedlings enter. When one thinks how small and tender they 
are at the first, and how both earth and air are filled with 
competitors and enemies, one wonders that any of them sur- 
vive. Above them are great trees and lusty, smothering 
vines and bushes, all struggling to monopolize the light. 
Round about them are wild animals that trample and browze 
and burrow, and spread destruction. Drouth and flood and 
frost are constantly recurring perils while the seedlings are 
little-and have but a tenuous hold upon the soil. Even the 
overturn of a single dead leaf, if it falls flat upon them and 
shuts out the light, may extinguish the lives of dozens of 
them. 
