But if the mother plant really does any thinking at all, cannot you fancy how she chuckles with delight over the trick she has played, and the clever way in which she has started her young on its travels?
There is still another way in which birds help to scatter seeds. They alight in wet places, covering their little feet with mud. Now, a clot of mud may contain many different seeds; and for days this clot may stick to the bird’s foot, and thus cause the seeds it holds to be carried for hundreds of miles.
Have you ever heard of Darwin? He was a great man who spent most of his life in studying plants and animals.
How many years do you suppose he was interested in the study of those long, brown worms which you find in quantities in the lawn and after heavy rains along the sidewalk? At intervals for forty-four years he studied these little creatures which you girls think ugly and uninteresting enough, although the boys know they make fine fish bait.
Well, Darwin once raised eighty-two plants from seeds contained in a clot of earth which was clinging to the leg of a partridge. So you can see that when a bird gets his feet wet, he may really be doing the world a service. And it is not likely that he takes cold himself.
Now, I want you children to see how many different ways you can recall in which plants scatter abroad their little seeds; and later I want you to go out into the garden, or into the woods, and see if you cannot discover many of the seeds about which you have been reading. But better still it would be if you could find others of which I have told you nothing.
I should like you to make a list of the different plants which you find in fruit, putting after each name a slight description of the way in which it gets rid of its seeds. This will not be a stupid task at all if you set your mind to it. It will give your walks a new pleasure, and it will bring to your school work something of the freshness and joy which belong to the woods.
Part II—Young Plants
