8 NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



find a pleasant place for their future home. Some, who do 

 not like to obtain services thus by hook and crook, succeed 

 by pretended friendship, sticking' closely to their self -chosen 

 companions. They cover their little seeds with a most ad- 

 hesive glue, and when the busy bee comes to gather honey 

 from their sweet blossoms, which they jauntily hang out to 

 catch the unwary insect, the seeds adhere to its body, and 

 travel thus on four fine wings through the wide, wide 

 world. Bee-fanciers know very well the common disease 

 of their sweet friends, when so much pollen adheres to their 

 head that they can not fly, and most miserably perish, one 

 by one, under the heavy burden which these inuocent-look- 

 ing plants have compelled them to carry. 



C. We have but little knowledge as yet of the activity 

 of life in the vegetable world, and of its momentous influ- 

 ence on the welfare of our own race. Few only know that 

 the gall-fly of Asia Minor decides on the existence of ten 

 thousands of human beings. As our clippers and steamers 

 carry the produce of the land from continent to continent, 

 so these tiny sailors of the air perform, under the direction 

 of Divine Providence, the important duty of carrying pol- 

 len, or fertilizing dust, from fig-tree to fig-tree. Without 

 pollen there come no figs ; and, consecpiently, on their ac- 

 tivity and number depend the productiveness of these 

 trees ; they therefore regulate, in fact, the extensive and 

 profitable fig trade of Smyrna. 



7. When neither quadruped nor insect can be coaxed or 

 forced to transport the young seeds that wish to see the 

 world, they sometimes launch forth on their own account, 

 and trust to a gentle breeze or a light current of air rising 

 from the heated surface of the earth. It is true, nature 

 has given them wings to fly with, such as man never yet 

 was skillful enough to devise for his own use. The maple 

 — our maple, I mean— has genuine little wings with which 

 it flies merrily about in its early days ; others, like the dan- 



