THE DANDELION. 
76f 
of this flower, with its ligulate petals many times doubled 
is elegant and perfect ; the brightness and liveliness of 
the yellow, like the warm rays of an evening sun, are 
not exceeded in any blossom, native or foreign, that I 
know of ; and this, having faded away, is succeeded by 
a head of down, which loosened from its receptacle, and 
floating in the breeze, comes sailing calmly along before 
us, freighted with a seed at its base ; but so accurately 
adjusted is its buoyant power to the burden it bears, 
that steadily passing on its way, it rests at last in some 
cleft or cranny in the earth, preparatory to its period 
of germination, appearing more like a flight of animated 
creatures than the seed of a plant. This is a very 
beautiful appointment ! but so common an event as 
hardly to be noticed by us ; yet it accomplishes ef- 
fectually the designs of nature, and plants the species 
at distances and in places that no other contrivance 
could so easily and fitly effect. The seeds, it is true, 
might have fallen and germinated around the parent 
plant, but this was not the purpose of nature ; yet may 
seem to some a very unnecessary contrivance for the 
propagation of a common dandelion, whose benefits to 
mankind as a medicine, though retained in our phar- 
macopoeias, and occasionally resorted to, seem of no 
great importance. Nor are we sensible that its virtues 
are essential to any portion of the creation ; but this 
very circumstance should abate our pride, our assumed 
pretensions of knowledge, as we may be assured that 
its existence, though hidden from us, is required in the 
great scheme of nature, or such elaborate and sufficient 
contrivances for its continuation and increase would 
never have been called into action by Nature, who is so 
remarkably simple in all her actions, economical in her 
ways, and frugal of her means. 
Some very extraordinary vegetable productions are 
now on the table before me. Though not gathered in 
this neighborhood, I am induced to give them a place 
with our notables, because I believe that they have not 
been noticed, and afford a strong example of the per- 
severing endeavors that plants exert at times to main- 
tain existence. One of these is the tufted head and 
