56 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
afflicted with a craze for cheap labour, wooed the 
wind, and soon had to give up its gay golden petals 
in order to provide longer stamens and pistils and 
more abundant pollen. There can be no question of 
the desire of this plant for cross-fertilisation, because 
from the way it has kept its pollen-bearing flowers 
below the seed-bearing ones any other method is 
scarcely possible. The Great Burnet (P. officinale) 
appears to have made a strong effort to get back to 
friendly relations with the insects,—perhaps from 
having found that the stations 1t had taken up in 
damp meadows were not so favourable for wind- 
fertilisation as the high-lying downs and pastures 
frequented by its smaller relation. Its petals, alas! 
were gone, but it economised in the pollen department, 
—cutting down the number of stamens to four, and 
making these so short that they do not stand above 
the calyx-lobes,—simplified its stigmas, and enlarged 
its calyx, putting some purple colour into these at the 
same time, and—more important still—took to offering 
nectar to its insect-friends. 
