CHAPTER VIII. 
MAN DISPERSES SEEDS AND PLANTS. 
In describing the various means by which plants are 
dispersed, people are very likely not to mention the aid 
supplied by man, or to speak of his efforts as artificial or 
unnatural, forgetting for the time that man so far appears 
to be the crown of earthly existence, and that his works 
are a necessary part of a complete world. 
51. Burs stick to clothing. — Late in summer or in 
autumn, who is there who has not returned from a walk 
along the river or from a tramp through thickets or the 
open woods, to find large numbers of half a dozen kinds 
of seed-like fruits sticking to his clothes? When ripe, 
these fruits usually separate from the parent plant very 
easily, by a joint or brittle place well provided for in the 
early part of the season. In pursuing your way you rub 
off a portion of these fruits, and at the end of the journey, 
or before, you sit down in some comfortable spot and 
deliberately pick off the unwelcome stick-tights. At such 
times you have been the means of transporting seeds, and 
you have left them scattered about ready to grow. If 
you ever were so fortunate as to live on a farm, you must 
have seen your father or his hired help carefully look 
about the field or the wood lot and remove all the bur- 
