THE PEDIGREE OF WHEAT. 667 



some lilies than by others, is that the family has absolutely outstripped 

 all others of the trinary class in the race for the possession of the 

 earth, and has now occupied all the most favorable positions in every 

 part of the world. While the alismas and their allies have been so 

 crowded out that they now linger only in a few ponds, marshes, and 

 swamps, to which the more recent lily tribe have not yet had time 

 fully to adapt themselves, the true lilies and their yet more advanced 

 descendants have taken seizin of every climate and every zone upon 

 our planet, and are to be found in every possible position, from the 

 arborescent yuccas and huge agaves of the tropics to the wild hyacinths 

 of our English woodlands and the graceful asphodels of the Mediter- 

 ranean hill-sides. 



The lilies themselves, again, do not all stand on one plane of ho- 

 mogeneous evolution. There are different grades of development 

 still surviving among the class itself. The little yellow gagea which 

 grows sparingly in sandy English fields may be taken as a very fair 

 representative of the simplest and earliest true lily type. It bears a 

 small bunch of little golden flowers, only to be distinguished from the 

 higher alismas by their united ovaries : for though both calyx and 

 petals are here brightly colored, that is also the case in the flowering 

 rushes, and in many others of the alisma group. On the other hand, 

 though it may be said generally of the lilies that their calyx and pet- 

 als are colored alike sometimes so much so as to be practically in- 

 distinguishable yet there are many kinds which still retain the green- 

 ish calyx-pieces, and that even in the more developed genera. But 

 most of the lilies are far handsomer than gaarea and its allies : even 

 in England itself we have such very conspicuous and attractive flow- 

 ers as the purple fritillaries, which every Oxford man has gathered by 

 handfuls in the spongy meadows about Iffley lock, with their dark 

 spotted petals converging into a bell, and the nectaries at the base 

 producing each a large drop of luscious honey. Some, like our wild 

 hyacinths, have assumed a tubular shape under stress of insect selec- 

 tion, the better to promote proper fertilization ; and at the same time 

 have acquired a blue pigment, to allure the eyes of azure-loving bees. 

 Others have become dappled with spots to act as honey-guides, or 

 have produced brilliant variegated blossoms to attract the attention of 

 great tropical insects. Our British lilies alone comprise such various 

 examples as the lily-of-the-valley, a tubular, white, scented species, 

 adapted for fertilization by moths ; the very similar Solomon's-seal ; 

 the butcher's-broom ; the wild tulip ; the star-of-Bethlehem ; the va- 

 rious squills ; the asparagus ; the grape-hyacinth ; and the meadow- 

 saffron. Some of them (for example, asparagus and butcher's-broom) 

 have also developed berries in place of dry capsules ; and these ber- 

 ries, being eaten by birds which digest the pulp, but not the actual 

 seeds, aid in the dispersion of the seedlings, and so enable the plant 

 to reduce the total number of seeds to three only, or one in each 



