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less curious phenomena have since been found to occur even among some of the most regularly-formed flowers. The arrangement, length, and position of all the parts of the flower is now found to have a purpose, and not the least remarkable portion of the phenomenon is the great variety of ways in which the same result is obtained. After the discoveries with regard to orchids, it was to be expected that the irregular, tubular, and spurred flowers should present various curious adaptations for fertilization by insect-agency. But even among the open, cup-shaped, and quite regular flowers, in which it seemed inevitable that the pollen must fall on the stigma and produce constant self-fertilization, it has been found that this is often prevented by a physiological variation-the anthers constantly emitting their pollen either a little earlier or a little later than the stigmas of the same flower, or of other flowers on the same plant, were in the best state to receive it; and as individual plants in different stations, soils, and aspects, differ somewhat in the time of flowering, the pollen of one plant would often be conveyed by insects. to the stigmas of some other plant in a condition to be fertilized by it. This mode of securing cross-fertilization seems so simple and easy, that we can hardly help wondering why it did not always come into action, and so obviate the necessity for those elaborate, varied, and highly complex contrivances found perhaps in the majority of coloured flowers. The answer to this of course is, that variation sometimes occurred most freely in one part of a plant's organization, and sometimes in another; and that the benefit of cross-fertilization was so great that any variation that favoured it was

preserved, and then formed the starting-point of a whole series of further variations, resulting in those marvellous adaptations for insect fertilization, which have given much of their variety, elegance, and beauty, to the floral world. For details of these adaptations we must refer the reader to the works of Darwin, Lubbock, Herman Müller, and others. We have here only to deal with the part played by colour, and by those floral structures in which colour is most displayed.

Attractive Odours in Flowers.-The sweet odours of flowers, like their colours, seem often to have been developed as an attraction or guide to insect fertilizers, and the two phenomena are often complementary to each other. Thus, many inconspicuous flowers-like the mignonette and the sweet-violet, can be distinguished by their odours before they attract the eye, and this may often prevent their being passed unnoticed; while very showy flowers, and especially those with variegated or spotted petals, are seldom sweet. White, or very pale flowers, on the other hand, are often excessively sweet, as exemplified by the jasmine and clematis ; and many of these are only scented at night, as is strikingly the case with the night-smelling stock, our butterfly orchids (Habenaria chlorantha), the greenishyellow Daphne pontica, and many others. These white flowers are mostly fertilized by night-flying moths; and those which reserve their odours for the evening probably escape the visits of diurnal insects, which would consume their nectar without effecting fertilization. The absence of odour in showy flowers, and its preponderance among those that are white, may be shown to be a fact by an examination of the lists in Mr. Mongredien's work

on hardy trees and shrubs.' He gives a list of about 160 species with showy flowers, and another list of sixty species with fragrant flowers: but only twenty of these latter are included among the showy species, and these are almost all white flowered. Of the sixty species with fragrant flowers, more than forty are white, and a number of others have greenish, yellowish, or dusky and inconspicuous flowers. The relation of white flowers to nocturnal insects is also well shown by those which, like the evening primroses, only open their large white blossoms after sunset. The red Martagon lily has been observed by Mr. Herman Müller to be fertilized by the humming-bird hawk moth, which flies in the morning and afternoon when the colours of this flower, exposed to the nearly horizontal rays of the sun, glow with brilliancy, and when it also becomes very sweetscented.

Attractive grouping of Flowers.-To the same need of conspicuousness the combination of so many individually small flowers into heads and bunches is probably due, producing such broad masses as those of the elder, the guelder-rose, and most of the Umbellifera, or such elegant bunches as those of the lilac, laburnum, horse chestnut, and wistaria. In other cases minute flowers are gathered into dense heads, as with Globularia, Jasione, clover, and all the Compositæ ; and among the latter the outer flowers are often developed into a ray, as in the sunflowers, the daisies, and the asters, forming a starlike compound flower, which is itself often produced in immense profusion.

1 Trees and Shrubs for English Plantations, by Augustus Mongredien. Murray, 1870.

Why Alpine Flowers are so Beautiful.-The beauty of alpine flowers is almost proverbial. It consists either in the increased size of the individual flowers as compared with the whole plant, in increased intensity of colour, or in the massing of small flowers into dense cushions of bright colour; and it is only in the higher Alps, above the limit of forests and upwards towards the perpetual snow-line that these characteristics are fully exhibited. This effort at conspicuousness under adverse circumstances may be traced to the comparative scarcity of winged insects in the higher regions, and to the necessity for attracting them from a distance. Amid the vast slopes of debris and the huge masses of rock so prevalent in higher mountain regions, patches of intense colour can alone make themselves visible and serve to attract the wandering butterfly from the valleys. Mr. Herman Müller's careful observations have shown, that in the higher Alps bees and most other groups of winged insects are almost wanting, while butterflies are tolerably abundant; and he has discovered, that in a number of cases where a lowland flower is adapted to be fertilized by bees, its alpine ally has had its structure so modified as to be adapted for fertilization only by butterflies.' But bees are always (in the temperate zone) far more abundant than butterflies, and this will be another reason why flowers specially adapted to be fertilized by the latter should be rendered unusually conspicuous. We find, accordingly, the yellow primrose of the plains replaced by pink and magenta-coloured alpine species; the straggling wild pinks of the lowlands by the masses of large flowers in such mountain species as Dianthus alpinus and D.

Nature, vol. xi. pp. 32, 110.

glacialis; the saxifrages of the high Alps with bunches of flowers a foot long as in Saxifraga longifolia and S. cotyledon, or forming spreading masses of flowers as in S. oppositifolia; while the soapworts, silencs, and louseworts are equally superior to the allied species of the plains.

Why Allied Species of Flowers Differ in Size and Beauty.-Again, Dr. Müller has discovered that when there are showy and inconspicuous species in the same genus of plants, there is often a corresponding difference of structure, those with large and showy flowers being quite incapable of self-fertilization, and thus depending for their very existence on the visits of insects; while the others are able to fertilize themselves should insects fail to visit them. We have examples of this difference in Malva sylvestris, Epilobium augustifolium, Polygonum bistorta, and Geranium pratense—which have all large or showy flowers, and must be fertilized by insects-as compared with Malva rotundifolia, Epilo bium parviflorum, Polygonum aviculare, and Geranium pusillum, which have small or inconspicuous flowers, and are so constructed that if insects should not visit them they are able to fertilize themselves?1

Absence of Colour in Wind-fertilized Flowers.-As supplementing these curious facts showing the relation of colour in flowers to the need of the visits of insects to fertilize them, we have the remarkable, and on any other theory, utterly inexplicable circumstance, that in all the numerous cases in which plants are fertilized by the agency of the wind they never have specially coloured floral envelopes. Such are our pines, oaks, poplars, willows, beeches, and hazel; our nettles, grasses, Nature, vol. ix. p. 164.

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