boys have written to the Department of Agriculture and each month it
sends to the club a list of the publications sent out or reprinted
during the previous month. You girls might follow this good example set
you by the boys.

"Well, we have wandered a bit from the subject in hand. Weeds are again
discouraging because they have such facilities for travel. Talk about
flying machines--weeds are centuries ahead of men along these lines.
Look at a milkweed seed; it is a complete flying apparatus. With its
perfect ballast it flies beautifully along over field and river ready to
alight in proper seed style, end down.

"There is a piece of mechanism in the end of each burdock seed that
seems to make travel possible, and dissemination sure. Never was fish
hook more cleverly made than this hook of the bur seed. It catches on to
your clothing and travels until you feel its pull. Then you pick it off
and cast it aside. So it goes. It sticks to the furry and hairy coats of
animals and again is carried along.

"Did you ever observe the seed of wild carrot? It, too, is arranged with
clinging points all around and about its seed. If you should give just a
little attention to the subject of the means of distribution of wild
seeds you would have a greater respect for the ways and means of Nature.

"Here is another discouraging side to the weed question. Weeds produce
so many, many seeds! Look at a single stalk of plantain. This stalk does
not stand for one seed capsule, but all up and down the stalk are the
seeds; again, not one seed here and one there, but each capsule or seed
case holding many seeds. When these become ripe, then the top of the
capsule comes off just like the cover of a box, or the top of a salt
cellar, and the seeds are sent out. It would not be a useless thing to
count sometimes the number of seeds on one plantain stalk, and thus gain
an idea of the tremendous possibilities of increase which the weeds
have.

"A lad I once knew counted the number of seeds in a milkweed pod which
he had, and found very nearly two hundred. I do not remember the exact
number. It was between one hundred and ninety-five and two hundred.
Think of one pod scattering that number of seeds! Think again of the
number of pods on one milkweed plant! It is staggering, is it not? To be
sure we can remember the parable of the sower and have some hope, for
some seed may fall on soil in which they will never come to maturity.

"Weeds, like the wi