THE GENTIAN GROUP 163 
has adopted the barbed-hook device, BW i 
and they stick like burs to the GF We 
passer-by. | ; 
The Common Borage itself prefers 
the flattened disc, and its star-like 
flowers, with their five bright blue 
rays and its dark purple stamens, 
are finely set off by the whitish- 
blue bristles that protect the plant 
from crawling intruders, such as 
slugs and snails, or from ants and 
such-like that might steal the honey 
without profit to the flower. The 
same disc, with a slightly longer 
tube, and less pointed lobes of the 
corolla, marks the Forget-me-nots, of which the best known 
is, of course, the Water Forget-me-not, with its bright 
blue disc and yellow central eye. Here is a point worth 
noting. Almost all the other plants of the order are close-set 
with prickles and bristles to protect them from devouring 
enemies, but the Water Forget-me-not is protected from 
these by the element in which it lives, and we find that 
the leaves are quite smooth and shining. Whether it 
used to have bristles, but dropped them when it found 
them unnecessary in the water, or whether it is that 
its brethren, formerly smooth water-plants, developed 
bristles when they started their life in a new fashion on 
dry land, is another of the puzzles to which several 
thousand future years of recorded observations may, 
perhaps, enable somebody to suggest an answer. 
Of the Gentian group, your earliest-found example is 
almost sure to be the Centaury, its clusters of rose- 
coloured star-flowers brightening many of our roadsides; 
HOUND’S TONGUE, 
