Some plants make a sort of catapult to sling or hurl their fruits. Kerner von Marilaun was the first to describe some of these curious arrangements. He had brought home some fruits of _Dorycnium herbaceum_ and laid them on his writing-table. "Next day as I sat reading near the table, one of the seeds of the Dorycnium was suddenly jerked with great violence into my face." Some of the neatest catapult fruits are those of _Teucrium flavum_. (There is a British species, the Woodsage, but it has not got the same arrangement.) When the petals have fallen off, the four small fruits are left inside the cup-like sepals; the flower-stalk when dry is very elastic, and if an animal touches the sepals it swings violently and shoots out one of the fruits. But that is by no means the whole of the process: there are hairs arranged spirally in the throat of the sepals, and these give a spin or twirling motion like that of a rifle-bullet to the fruit. The fruit also flies out of the sepals in a line of flight which is inclined at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the horizon; at this angle, as is well known, the trajectory or distance travelled will be the greatest possible. But by far the best way to understand these questions is to try with some common weeds in the country towards the end of summer or beginning of autumn. If either the Cow Parsnip or wild Angelica, or Myrrhis, be gathered and kept till it is quite dry, then if you take it by the stalk and swing it to the full extent of the arms the fruits fly off to fifteen (or more) feet away. Every part is elastic--not only the main stalk, but the thin separate stalks of the flowers and also the delicate piece by which each half-fruit is attached. The half-fruits themselves are also so made that they are of exactly the right shape to take a long flight. Ever since the days of Icarus, one of the unsatisfied ambitions of mankind has been to fly like a bird, to "soar into the empyrean," and to be no longer chained to the earth's surface. It is a very curious study, that of the many and diverse inventions, almost always useless and very often fatal, by which men have endeavoured to solve this problem. Every one of these can be paralleled amongst the many neat contrivances of wind-borne fruits and seeds. The principle of the "parachute," which is more or less like an umbrella, is found in both fruits and seeds. One of the most beautiful is the Dandelion fruit, where a series of the most exquisite branched hairs springs from the top of the slender shaft which carries the little hard fruit. Most of the Composite or Dandelion order have, however, more of the "shuttlecock" idea. There is a row or crown of stiff and spreading or feathery hairs. [Illustration: _Stereo Copyright, Underwood & _Underwood_ _London & New York_ COTTON-FIELDS IN GEORGIA, U.S.A. Negroes picking the cotton harvest.]