812 Means of Plant Dispersion. [ August, 
century Joseph Gaertner published his great carpological work, 
“De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum,” in which the fruits and 
seeds of more than a thousand species of plants were described 
and figured, and among them many curious contrivances, but 
without specifying their use to the plant. It became a classical 
work on morphology, and had its influence on the natural classi- 
fication of plants. A. P. DeCandolle, in his work, “ Physiologie 
végétale,” and Alphonse DeCandolle, in his “ Géographie botan- 
ique raisonée,” paid considerable attention to this subject, and 
have recorded observations of much interest. Among the Ger- 
mans may be named Naegeli and Kerner, and of Italians, Del- 
pino, as students of these phenomena. They did not escape the 
notice of so careful an observer as Darwin. But the stimulus of 
his writings has had a greater effect in directing the mind to them 
than any extended observations of his own. The best and most 
complete treatise we have seen, is that of Dr. Friedrich Hilde- 
brand, of Freiburg, “Die Verbreitungsmittel der Pflanzen, Leip- 
zig, 1873." In this small volume of one hundred and sixty 
pages he brings together a great number of interesting facts, syS- 
tematically arranged, and accompanies them with several illustra- 
tive figures. Since, as already stated, the plan of this paper mainly 
contemplates those facts that have come under my own obser- 
vation, his work will be used only in a most general way. There 
is enough in our flora to illustrate all the most important charac- 
teristics of fruits and seeds, and the contrivances and agencies for 
-their dispersion and propagation as noticed by him, so that there 
is no need of resorting to the flora of the world to find them. 
The subject is naturally divided into four parts, both as to 
adaptations of structure and agents for distribution. The agents 
are the wind, water and animals, for each of which are found con- | 
trivances suited to these modes of spreading. There is a fourth — 
class, dependent on special movements in the plant itself. 
of these topics will be considered in order. | 
I. In examining plants with reference to modes of distribution, 
the agency of the wind is the most obvious and universal. 
means to secure this result are quite various in kind, and ue : 
mostly comprised in two divisions, adaptations of fruit and adap- - 
tations of seed, 2 
: i asto 
1 To this I am indebted for some of the facts of this paragraph, 35 well 
Sach’s Geschichte der Botanik, München, 1875. 
