Only as it grows in masses is the speedwell conspicuous - a sufficient reason for its habit of forming colonies and of gathering its insignificant blossoms together into dense spikes, since by these methods it issues a flaunting advertisement of its nectar. The flower that simplifies dining for insects has its certain reward in rapidly increased and vigorous descendants. To save repetition, the reader interested in the process of fertilization is referred to the account of the Maryland figwort, since many members of the large family to which both belong employ the same method of economizing pollen and insuring fertile seed. In this case visitors have only to crawl over the tiny blossoms. >From Labrador to Alaska, throughout almost every section of the United States, in South America, Europe, and Asia, roams the THYME-LEAVED SPEEDWELL (V. serpyllifolia), by the help of its numerous flat seeds, that are easily transported on the wind, and by its branching stem, that lies partly on the ground, rooting where the joints touch earth. The small oval leaves, barely half an inch long, grow in pairs. The tiny blue, or sometimes white, flowers, with dark pathfinders to the nectary, are borne on spike-like racemes at the ends of the stem and branches that rear themselves upward in fields and thickets to display their bloom before the passing bee. PALE, or NAKED, or ONE-FLOWERED BROOM-RAPE (Thalesia uniflora; Aphyllon uniflorum of Gray) Broom-rape family Flowers - Violet, rarely white, delicately fragrant, solitary at end of erect, glandular peduncles. Calyx hairy, bell-shaped, 5-toothed, not half the length of corolla, which is 1 in. or less long, with curved tube spreading into 2 lips, 5-lobed, yellow-bearded within; 4 stamens, in pairs, inserted on tube of corolla ; 1 pistil. Stem: About 1 in. long, scaly, often entirely underground; the 1 to 4 brownish scape-like peduncles, on which flowers are borne, from 3 to 8 in. high. Leaves: None. Fruit: An elongated, egg-shaped, 1-celled capsule containing numerous seeds. Preferred Habitat - Damp woods and thickets. Flowering Season - April-June. Distribution - British Possessions and United States from coast to coast, southward to Virginia, and Texas. A curious, beautiful parasite, fastened on the roots of honest plants from which it draws its nourishment. The ancestors of this species, having deserted the path of rectitude ages ago to live by piracy, gradually lost the use of their leaves, upon which virtuous plants depend as upon a part of their digestive apparatus; they grew smaller and smaller, shriveled and dried, until now that the one-flowered broom-rape sucks its food, rendered already digestible through another's assimilation, no leaves remain on its brownish scapes. Disuse of any talent in the vegetable kingdom, as in the spiritual, leads to inevitable loss: "Unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away."