126 OUR COMPOUND FLOWERS. 



not unjustly. Most of them are provided with a coronet of silken 

 fibres or feathers that form a parachute, through the means of which 

 the seed is 



" borne abroad upon 

 The winds of heaven, and scatter'd into air." 



The form of this parachute is varied apparently for little better 

 purpose than to raise our wonder, and stimulate our curiosity, towards 

 the seeking out of the works of Plim whose rich and beautiful fancy 

 designed them ; and I am satisfied that no one can examine the 

 series of structures they exhibit vrithout a conviction that special 

 thought must have been employed in each of them. Elevated on the 

 apex of a long beak, the parachute of the seed of the Goatsbeard 

 (Plate V. fig. 1) consists of a number of slender spokes which diffuse 

 themselves circularly, and are "telarly interwoven" somewhat after 

 the fashion of the spider's web. This comparatively intricate structure 

 is given as a countervail to the great size and weight of the seed. The 

 down of the Dandelion is supported on a long and slender pedicle, 

 and is an object of vulgar admiration ; but it scarcely equals in 

 beauty the similarly patterned fruit of the Helminthia (Plate V. 

 fig. 2). The Thistle's down is, on the contrary, sessile, — the threads 

 being sometimes only spinous, at other times plumed like a feather, 

 — and the down of the latter is peculiarly light. The coronet of the 

 Carhne-thistle is remarkable for its elegance and circular spread and 

 plumage, and buoys easily its silky-coated seed. In the Sow-thistles 

 what we most admire is the ribbed and striated seeds, but the down 

 that diffuses them is abundant and of pure whiteness. The seeds of 

 the Coltsfoot (Plate V. fig. 3) afford an example of a structure 

 common in the order, where the seed is surmounted by a tuft of 

 silken hairs armed, at regular intervals, vfith a series of denticles or 

 spines, only visible with a good magnifier. We have a contrast to 

 this in the curious fruit of the Centaurea cyanus (Plate VI. fig. 2), 

 which has a small tuft of asbestine spines at the base, and a large but 

 short tuft of rigid stout lanceolate spines on the top, the edges of 

 each of them indented with close and sharp serratures like a saw. 

 This tuft cannot float the seed in the air, but it will obviously direct 

 and hasten its descent into the soil; and it will be remarked that the 

 forward direction of the spines, in all the instances we have yet quoted, 

 mustbeopposed toeveryinfluence that would tendtocast them up again, 

 after having been buried under the surface. We meet with a contrary 

 structure in the seeds of the Bidens (Plate VI. fig. 3). The spines 

 on their margins, and on their awns, are all retroflected, — an arrange- 

 ment which better adapts them to the laying hold of objects on their 



to make it known to those of the mob who had not heard it before. To 

 give the meaning of " weighing " or " striping " to the word, gives no 

 meaning to the passage. To " scale " the school is, in the Border language, 

 to dismiss the boys from it : e. g. the " school is just scaled," is — the boys 

 have just dispersed. 



