y
variety of them all is equally satisfactory. One might parallel it with
the case of hatching birds' eggs. Most birds sit upon their eggs
themselves, and supply the necessary warmth from their own bodies. But
any alternative plan that attains the same end does just as well. The
felonious cuckoo drops her foundlings unawares in another bird's nest:
the ostrich trusts her unhatched offspring to the heat of the burning
desert sand: and the Australian brush-turkeys, with vicarious maternal
instinct, collect great mounds of decaying and fermenting leaves and
rubbish, in which they deposit their eggs to be artificially incubated,
as it were, by the slow heat generated in the process of putrefaction.
Just in the same way, we shall see in the case of seeds that any method
of dispersion will serve the plant's purpose equally well, provided
only it succeeds in carrying a few of the young seedlings to a proper
place in which they may start fair at last in the struggle for
existence.

As in the case of the fertilization of flowers, so in that of the
dispersal of seeds, there are two main ways in which the work is
effected--by animals and by wind-power. I will not insult the
intelligence of the reader at the present time of day by telling him
that pollen is usually transferred from blossom to blossom in one or
other of these two chief ways--it is carried on the heads or bodies of
bees and other honey-seeking insects, or else it is wafted on the wings
of the wind to the sensitive surface of a sister-flower. So, too, seeds
are for the most part either dispersed by animals or blown about by the
breezes of heaven to new situations. These are the two most obvious
means of locomotion provided by nature; and it is curious to see that
they have both been utilized almost equally by plants, alike for their
pollen and their seeds, just as they have been utilized by man for his
own purposes on sea or land, in ship, or windmill, or pack-horse, or
carriage.

There are two ways in which animals may be employed to disperse
seeds--voluntarily and involuntarily. They may be compelled to carry
them against their wills: or they may be bribed and cajoled and
flattered into doing the plant's work for it in return for some
substantial advantage or benefit the plant confers upon them. The first
plan is the one adopted by burrs and cleavers. These adhesive fruits
are like the man who buttonholes you and won't be shaken off: they are
provided with little