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The general consensus of all investigation to-day was that on 
the whole they were warranted in saying, that the health, vigour, 
progress, and development of the flower-world depended on what 
is called cross fertilization. 
The vegetable world itself was an intermediate stage between 
the mineral and the animal world. They had no power without 
the intervention of the vegetable world to live on mineral food. 
Flowers were only a part of the vegetable world, and the correla- 
tion between them and insects was most distinct and specific. 
They found themselves face to face, not only with facts, but with 
mysteries as insoluble as they ever were, and they were likely to 
remain so. They had to check themselves with remembering 
that all their knowledge was of phenomena, but the little 
“nomena” that lay behind was as far beyond their grasp as they 
were beyond the ken of the Ancient Britons. 
Lord Avebury had given the case of the South African Acacia, 
which was in danger of being robbed of its leaves by a species of 
ants which had a desire to grow mushrooms, but could not do so 
without manure. The acacia wished to have a word in the 
matter, and said as it were, ‘* This will never do, I shall be 
robbed of all my leaves.” The acacia forthwith grows holly 
thorns with a little nectar cap. Another species of ant discovers it 
and finds ‘‘ This is exactly what we want: we want some food.” 
They set to work and became the defenders of the acacia, so that 
it was no longer in danger of losing its leaves. It was with facts 
like this that the vegetable world was full, so that they could 
only touch the fringe of the picture and think what the whole 
must be. Cross fertilization was the process by which the world 
of flowers was preserved and enabled most thoroughly to propa- 
gate its kind. It was not possible for a plant to fertilize itself. 
The pollen by which they are fertilized was brought in two ways, 
by wind, and by insects. 
Making use of the lantern, the Lecturer then proceeded to 
illustrate, by a series of coloured slides, the methods by which 
the pollen grain (the mystery of the vegetable world) was 
- conveyed to the stigmatic surfaces of plants, the influence of 
insects on the fecundity of flowers, the types of floral structures 
and pollen grains; the process of fertilization taking place as if 
by some strange hidden ‘hand of an artist,”’ as Huxley had said. 
The four large orders of insects which did most of the work of 
cross-fertilization were beetles, bees, butterflies, and flies. These 
types, with their respective apparatus for their special work, 
were shown on the screen, and the beautiful correlations between 
the flower and the insect were pointed out. The humming bird, 
with its long beak, also took a share in the work of fertilizing 
