SOMETHING ABOUT SEEDS. * 
BY W. W. BAILEY. 
By simply calling attention to the many beauties of these little | 
organs, I hope to induce the youthful student to follow further in 
that pleasant path which I shall merely indicate. 
A few months since I was reading with a tear in one eye for 
the misfortunes of the French, and a twinkle of merriment in the 
other, at the adventures of their ubiquitous war minister, when my 
breath disturbed the seed of an Asclepias (A. incarnata), by acci- 
dent reposing on my table, and it floated on a voyage of discovery 
_ to a distant corner of my room. ‘Monsieur Gambetta!” I ex- 
claimed, “Here is your original aéronaut! No balloon or para- 
chute of man’s invention can compare with the tufted silk which 
floats this little voyager! Fearlessly he trusts himself to the 
breezes, now for a moment touching on some interposing obsta- 
cle, then lightly sailing off again to bear his freight of life to the 
position chosen for its home.” 
And now the flossy seedkin has come into our lines, and shall 
not be released until he passes a satisfactory examination. Where 
are you travelling, little stranger, and what is the cause of your 
hurry? Can you not tell us something of your balloon itself, and 
of your purpose in trusting to the winds? After an ineffectual 
effort to soar beyond my reach, the imprisoned seed reveals his se- 
cret, and in so far as I can interpret his peculiar language, his 
story is as follows :— è 
The seed of Asclepias, or milkweed, is thin, flat, and of a brown- 
ish tint. The embryo is devoid of that store of albumen which 
many plants provide for the early sustenance of their young. It, 
with its fellows, is imbricated upon a papery placenta, its plumy 
tufts reposing in gill-like processes of the same until the perfec- 
tion of the fruit, when they become disengaged by the lightest 
touch, and waft the attached seed to its destined resting-place. 
Nothing can be more soft and satiny than is the so-called coma 
of Asclepias. Under the microscope the hairs are found to be 
exceedingly smooth and regular in outline, and undistinguished 
+ A paper read before the Franklin Society, of Providence, R. t 
(71) 
