Buttercups and Columbines 71 
Meadow-rues (Thalictrum), scarcely known except to 
botanists, though their pretty foliage entitles them to 
consideration. They are plants which — though 
members of a bright-flowered family—teach man 
that his favourite theory that the chief end of flowers 
is to please his eye is all moonshine; for these have 
been so forsaken by insects that the flower has had 
to press the wind into its service as a pollen-carrier, 
with all the waste that involves. Flowers fertilised 
by wind-agency (anemophilous), with bright-coloured 
congeners, may be generally regarded as degenerate, 
and this is probably the course of their downward 
career: they made a coloured calyx do instead of a 
corolla, which completely | 
vanished, and with the “~~ y 
petals probably went the ¢ Ns, i 
honey - glands; then the Sy Ke =~ : 
. ; ete asa = 
insects gave up their visits (ER A) 
as unprofitable to themselves, 
and only those flowers that 4 
chanced to fertilise themselves Seed-head of Clematis 
contrived to set seeds. Lack- 
ing the stimulus afforded by insect irritation, less nutri- 
ment flowed to the sepals, and these dwindled and 
began to revert to the purplish-green or yellowish- 
green that isa sign of floral poverty. The essential 
organs would increase in length, the stamens produc- 
ing much pollen and the stigmas maturing before the 
anthers. And so we find them to-day, the yellow 
anthers the most striking feature of the flowers. 
The Yellow Meadow-rue (Thalictrum jflavwm), 
though honeyless, attracts pollen-feeding flies and 
honey-bees by the attractiveness of its yellow 
