THE MASTER INSTINCT 
Behold the birds building their nests in spring; 
how absorbed, how persistent they are! How al- 
most impossible it is to defeat or discourage them! 
Any one who has tried to prevent English sparrows 
from breeding on his premises soon learns what a 
difficult task he has undertaken. Equally, any one 
who charges himself to see to it that no burdocks or 
red-root, or other troublesome weeds, mature their 
seeds on his farm or about his grounds, finds out 
what enterprise and hardihood he is trying to thwart. 
Cut the plebeian burdock down within a few inches 
of the ground and keep it cut down, shorn of all its 
big leaves, and yet in August or September, without 
the support of any foliage, it will push out and de- 
velop burs in the axils of its old leaves. I have seen 
masses of burs thus form about the stem half as 
large as one’s fist. The plant was making a last and 
supreme effort to perpetuate itself. Most garden 
weeds behave in the same way. As the summer 
nears its end, and their earlier efforts to form seeds 
have been thwarted, they seem to become alarmed, 
and to make a last heroic effort, probably drawing 
upon the last grain of material stored in the root and 
stalk to develop the precious germ. 
Fruit-trees, starved or in an unhealthy condition, 
seem to be seized with the same alarm and overload 
themselves with small, inferior fruit. Is it not no- 
torious that men and women suffering from certain 
slow, wasting diseases are exceptionally prolific? On 
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