112 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
left, and that is the wind. As from all plants that depend 
on this rather erratic agency, a very large supply of pollen 
is required, and it must be of a particular kind. It is 
obvious that many sorts of wind are of no help to the 
plant. The gale that comes with a soaking rain will 
certainly drown the pollen, and will probably also carry 
it too far, to some place where, so far as our conifer is 
concerned, it will be wasted. It may not be wasted, 
nevertheless, so far as plant-life as a whole is concerned, 
for when we were talking of alge, we found that the 
“Red Snow,” as it is called, drew much of its living from 
the decayed and wind-borne pollen of neighbouring Swiss 
pine-forests. What the firs require is a gentle breeze that 
will carry their pollen, which is a dust like the very finest 
flour, up into the air in a uniformly distributed cloud, to 
let it fall again gently on the waiting cones of seed 
embryos, which, as you may see for yourselves, are almost 
always posted upon the top of the trees, whilst the pollen- 
bearing flowers tend to crowd the lower branches. 
The amount of pollen that can be shaken out of a ripe 
stamen flower is simply astounding, but it is to be 
explained, like the vast number of the eggs of a fish, by 
the fact that only a very small proportion will succeed in” 
life. The difference in wind-borne and insect-borne pollen 
is worth emphasising. Such pollen as we are describing 
is very fine, light, and dry, the Pines even providing their 
pollen-grains with air-bladders to enable them to float 
more lightly in the air; but when insects have to do the 
carrying, we find the grains armed with hooks, to cling to 
the insect’s hairs, or close-grouped in sticky masses. 
I have insisted so far chiefly on the difference in the 
seed by which Pines and Firs are marked off from other 
flowering plants. Now let us look at their flowers again, 
