This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... applied to the removal of various necessities that crush us, such as pain, old age and death, one half of the energy displayed by any little flower in our gardens, we may well believe that our lot would be very different from what it is. in This need of movement, this craving for space, among the greater number of plants, is manifested in both the flower and the fruit. It is easily explained in the fruit, or, in any case, discloses only a less complex experience and foresight. Contrary to that which takes place in the animal kingdom and because of the terrible law of absolute immobility, the chief and worst enemy of the seed is the paternal stock. We are in a strange world, where the parents, unable to move from place to place, know that they are condemned to starve or stifle their offspring. Every seed that falls at the foot of the tree or plant is either lost or doomed to sprout in wretchedness. Hence the immense f effort to throw off the yoke and conquer space. Hence the marvellous systems of dissemination, of propulsion, of navigation of the air which we find on every side in the forest and the plain: among others, to mention, in passing, but a few of the most curious, the aerial screw or samara of the Maple; the bract of the Lime-tree; the flyingmachine of the Thistle, the Dandelion and the Salsafy; the detonating springs of the Spurge; the extraordinary squirt of the Momordica; the hooks of the eriophilous plants; and a thousand other unexpected and astounding pieces of mechanism; for there is. not, so to speak, a single seed but has invented for its sole use a complete method of escaping from the maternal shade. It would, in fact, be impossible, if one had not practised a little botany, to believe the expenditure of imagination...