GOURDS AND BOTTLES. 313 



fertilization. And this is how the gourd and ciicumher have 

 solved that great crux of plant organization : 



The male flowers are larger than the female, and consist sim- 

 ply of a funnel-shaped corolla, inclosing a column of yellow sta- 

 mens. They have no fruit or ovary in the center, nor even the 

 abortive rudiment of such an organ. The female flowers, on the 

 other hand, have no stamens, but the corolla caps a small round 

 berry, the parent or embryo of the future fruit. Its center gives 

 rise to a slender style, forked and feathered at the tij), which is 

 the sensitive surface of the unswollen ovary. Now, when the bee 

 or other fertilizing insect visits a male flower, he dusts himself all 

 over (unconsciously, of course) with the fertilizing pollen. If, on 

 flying away, he next visits another male blossom on the same 

 plant, he only collects still more pollen. But if he happens to flit 

 ofi^ to a female flower, he brushes off some of the pollen, as he 

 passes, on to the feathery, sensitive surface protruded by the 

 plant right in his path, on purpose to meet him. In this way, 

 each female blossom makes perfectly certain of due fertilization 

 from a separate organism ; and such cross-fertilization, as Darwin 

 has shown, produces in the long run the most fertile seeds, and 

 the strongest, heartiest, and most vigorous seedlings. 



Originally, there can be little doubt, the flowers of the gourd 

 family were all hermaphrodite, as those of many among their less 

 developed relations still remain to the present day. But, once 

 upon a time, certain progressive gourds happened accidentally to 

 acquire the habit of producing more or less abortive stamens on 

 certain blossoms ; and as these gourds would therefore almost 

 necessarily insure cross-fertilization, and so produce in the long 

 run the finest seedlings, the habit once accidentally set up would 

 be carefully fostered by natural selection, till it grew at last into 

 a confirmed practice of the entire race. All through nature, in- 

 deed, we find that the scrubbiest, weediest, and shabbiest species 

 still retain the primitive habit of self-fertilization or in-and-in 

 breeding ; but that all the chief places in the hierarchy of life are 

 filled by species which have acquired in one way or another the 

 salutary practice of cross-fertilization, and which thus encourage 

 to the utmost of their power the frequent introduction of fresh 

 blood. The gourds, as a very dominant race, have naturally con- 

 formed to the general practice of higher types in this respect ; and 

 gardeners find, when they exclude insects from their hot-houses 

 and cucumber-frames, that they have to come to the aid of Nature 

 by artificial means, and to fertilize the blossoms with a camel's- 

 hair pencil. 



The flowers of the melon, the cucumber, and the vegetable 

 marrow are bright yellow and almost, if not quite, scentless. 

 Those of the true gourd, on the other hand, with which we are 



