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Their sunward sides are gardens, their shady sides are groves; the former devoted chiefly to eriogonae, compositae, and graminae; a square rod containing five or six profusely flowered eriogonums of several species, about the same number of bahia and linosyris, and a few grass tufts; each species being planted trimly apart, with bare gravel between, as if cultivated artificially.
Professor Beal has calculated the total quantity consumed in Iowa in one year, in the days when sparrows were normally numerous, at 1,750,000 pounds. THE AMERICAN GOLDFINCH as a weed destroyer has few equals. It makes a specialty of the seeds of the members of the Order Compositae, and is especially fond of the seeds of ragweed, thistles, wild lettuce and wild sunflower.
Exhausted by the performance of their duty, they go, somewhere or other, to die. In September appears the second generation, comprising both males and females. I find both sexes wassailing on the flowers, especially the Compositae, the centauries and thistles. They are not harvesting now: they are refreshing themselves, holding high holiday, teasing one another. It is the wedding-time.
The capsule of the pansy expands into three valves, each scooped out like a boat and laden in the middle with two rows of seeds. When these valves dry, the edges shrivel, press upon the grains and eject them. Light seeds, especially those of the order of Compositae, have aeronautic apparatus tufts, plumes, fly-wheels which keep them up in the air and enable them to take distant voyages.
These differences have been attributed by some authors to pressure, and the shape of the seeds in the ray-florets in some Compositae countenances this idea; but, in the case of the corolla of the Umbelliferae, it is by no means, as Dr. Hooker informs me, in species with the densest heads that the inner and outer flowers most frequently differ.
All these colored belts blending smoothly make a wall of light ineffably fine, and as beautiful as a rainbow, yet firm as adamant. When I first enjoyed this superb view, one glowing April day, from the summit of the Pacheco Pass, the Central Valley, but little trampled or plowed as yet, was one furred, rich sheet of golden compositae, and the luminous wall of the mountains shone in all its glory.
This fact will, perhaps, be rendered even more striking, by giving a few illustrations: thus, Scalesia, a remarkable arborescent genus of the Compositae, is confined to the archipelago: it has six species: one from Chatham, one from Albemarle, one from Charles Island, two from James Island, and the sixth from one of the three latter islands, but it is not known from which: not one of these six species grows on any two islands.
'Not a bit, replied he; 'my father is a naturalist and Darwinian; not a sceptic, but Agnosticus suavis or Verecundus, ordo compositae, you know. "Hunt the ghost by all means," said he, when I suggested a ghost "worry," and then as he does sometimes over coffee and a cigarette after dinner he talked with a real keen interest on the whole subject.
The peculiarity of the Galapageian Flora is best shown in certain families; thus there are 21 species of Compositae, of which 20 are peculiar to this archipelago; these belong to twelve genera, and of these genera no less than ten are confined to the archipelago! Dr.
Grass-land much tumbled about, the turf very fine and green, dotted over with clumps and single trees, with picturesque, rocky hills, deeply cleft by water-courses were on our right, and on our left the green slopes blended with the flushed, stony soil near the sea, on which indigo and various compositae are the chief vegetation.
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