FIVE CONSPICUOUS PLANT FAMILIES. 19 
it, we will probably find that we are tipped in the scale of its 
favour. 
We must first resign a natural feeling of resentment at its 
aggressiveness and its habit of flaunting itself from every 
available space. Its children, we must remember, have been 
a little neglected in education and know no better. They 
arrive at a season of the year when the dear preacher 
has retired from his pulpit and they have not the advantage of 
hearing his good doctrine. The violet is busy rooting its run- 
ners for the next season’s growth and no longer raises its head 
to teach them about modesty. So being born with rather bold 
tastes, the poor composites think that they are doing quite a 
fine thing in puffing themselves up and topping over everything. 
If they were much spoken about in the good old-fashioned 
times it must have been with the expression that there was not a 
lazy hair in one of their heads. The energetic way in which 
they set about dispersing their seeds is truly wonderful, and, as 
has been already hinted at, their moral character not being 
fully developed, they have no compunction whatever in using 
some very extraordinary means. But this might possibly be 
explained by their agreeing with Loyola in doctrine. The un- 
‘kind way many of them have of covering sheep, the only animal 
without a weapon of defense, with their hooked fruits is alluded 
to in this connection. 
To those that complain of their downright maliciousness in 
retaliation for the hay fever, the composites answer calmly : 
“We are a family that does not invite intimacy. View us from 
a distance, ex masse, and many of our failings will be over- 
looked.” Evidently this lesson of avoiding familiarity is what 
they wish us to learn. 
And who does not delight in the fields that are radiant with 
their rich autumn colouring? They visit the earth when the 
more delicate blossoms have passed bloom, and they find 
things dry and dusty, showing the wear and tear of the summer. 
Then what can be more natural than that they should say to 
