What more likely, since hummingbirds are confined to
the New World? Therefore why should the plant waste its energy on
a product useless in England? It can never attain perfection
there until hummingbirds are imported, as bumblebees had to be
into Australia before the farmers could harvest seed from their
clover fields (see red clover).
Familiar as we may be with the nervous little seedpods of the
touch-me-not, which children ever love to pop and see the seeds
fly, as they do from balsam pods in grandmother's garden, they
still startle with the suddenness of their volley. Touch the
delicate hair-trigger at the end of a capsule, and the lightning
response of the flying seeds makes one jump. They sometimes land
four feet away. At this rate of progress a year, and with the
other odds against which all plants have to contend, how many
generations must it take to fringe even one mill pond with
jewel-weed; yet this is rapid transit indeed compared with many
of Nature's processes. The plant is a conspicuous sufferer from
the dodder (q.
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