668 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ovary. Among familiar exotics of the same family may be mentioned 

 the hyacinth, tuberose, tulip, asphodel, yucca, and most of the so-called 

 lilies. In short, no tribe supplies us with a greater number of hand- 

 some garden flowers, for the most part highly adapted to a very ad- 

 vanced type of insect fertilization. 



Properly to understand the development of our existing wheat 

 from this brilliant and ornamental family, as well as to realize the 

 true nature of its relation to allied orders, we must first glance briefly 

 at the upward evolution of the other branches descended from the 

 true lilies, and then recur to the downward evolution which finally re- 

 sulted in the production of the degenerate grasses. In the main line 

 of progressive development, the lilies gave origin to the amaryllids, 

 familiarly represented in England by the snow-drops and daffodils, a 

 family which is technically described as differing from the lilies in 

 having an inferior instead of a superior ovary that is to say, with 

 the pistil apparently placed below instead of above the point where 

 the petals and calyx-pieces are inserted. From the evolutionary point 

 of view, however, this difference merely amounts to saying that the 

 amaryllids are tubular lilies, in which the tube has coalesced with the 

 walls of the ovary, so that the petals seem to begin at its summit in- 

 stead of at its base. The change gives still greater certainty of im- 

 pregnation, and therefore benefits the race accordingly. At the same 

 time, the amaryllids, being probably a much newer development than 

 the true lilies, have not yet had leisure to gain quite so firm a footing 

 in the world ; though on the other hand many of them are far more 

 minutely adapted for special insect fertilization than their earlier allies. 

 They include the so-called Guernsey lilies of our gardens, as well as 

 the huge American aloes which all visitors to the Riviera know so 

 well on the diy hills around Nice and Cannes. The iris family are a 

 similar but rather more advanced tribe, with only three stamens instead 

 of six, their superior organization allowing them readily to dispense 

 with half their complement, and so to attain the perfect trinary sym- 

 metry of three sepals, three petals, three stamens, and three ovaries. 

 Among them, the iris and the crocus are circular in shape, but some 

 very advanced types, such as the gladiolus, have acqitired a bilateral 

 form, in correlation with special insect visits. From these, the step is 

 not great to the orchids, undoubtedly the highest of all the trinary 

 flowers, with the triple arrangement almost entirely obscured, and 

 with the most extraordinary varieties of adaptation to fertilization by 

 bees or even by humming-birds in the most marvelous fashions. Alike 

 by their inferior ovary, their bilateral shape, their single stamen, their 

 remarkable forms, their brilliant colors, and their occasional mimicry 

 of insect-life, the orchids show themselves to be by far the highest of 

 the trinary flowers, if not, indeed, of the entire vegetable world. 



From this brief sketch of the main line of upward evolution from 

 lilies to orchids, we must now return to the grand junction afforded 



