NATIVE WILD FLOWERS 
prairies of the North-west, where miles of Sunflowers, 
Rudbeckias, Liatris and other gorgeous flowers—blue, white, 
red—may be seen all through the hot summer months, the 
orange and yellow stars of the Helianthus tribe above all 
conspicuously apparent. 
The garden Sunflower may often be met with within the 
forest, the seed having been carried by the ground-hog or 
squirrel and dropped on the road. I have seen little piles 
of the ripe seed of the garden Sunflower lying on stumps 
and rails to dry, the industrious little gleaners depositing 
them in such places to be hoarded at their convenience in 
their granaries. The same thing may be noticed during the 
harvest-time near the wheat-fields. I have watched with 
no little curiosity the heaps of wheat left by these little 
innocent gleaners, and have seen them come with their com- 
panions to fetch away their newly-threshed stores, having 
first carefully destroyed the germs. Who taught the squirrel 
this latter wise precaution to prevent the germination of the 
grain? 
Many years ago, while living on a wild lot on the Rice 
Lake, my son, in digging the ground for the construction of 
a root-house, discovered a granary of a squirrel, or it might 
be of a ground-hog, the Canadian marmot. A large supply 
of Indian corn, beech-nuts and acorns was stored many feet 
below the surface of the dry sandy soil; but the eye or 
germ had been carefully bitten out of each one. 
DANDELION—Taraxacum Dens-leonis (Desf.). 
The Composite Order presents us with more numerous 
families of plants than any other, and supplies us with a 
host of flowers, and also some troublesome weeds, which are 
of wide diffusion, the winged seeds being borne to great 
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