110 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
space formerly covered by the anthers. A pollen- 
dusted insect from a younger flower cannot fail to 
fertilise these stigmas. Self-fertilisation is out of 
the question here. 
The largest of our native species is the Corn Cockle 
(Githago segetum), a beautiful annual weed of corn- 
fields, which agrees with the Pinks in having honey 
accessible only to lepidoptera; but in its structure it 
comes nearer to the Lychnis, though it has no scales 
on its. petals. The plant is densely covered with 
long white hairs, calculated to prevent small crawling 
insects, ants and the like, from climbing up to the 
flowers and stealing the honey and pollen. The 
strongly-ribbed leathery calyx ends in five teeth, 
which are drawn out into woolly, leaf-like extensions, 
much longer than the purple petals which are marked 
with guide-lines. As these flowers are so large and 
conspicuously coloured, they occur singly on long 
flower-stalks, and as the anthers shed their pollen 
before the stigmas are mature, cross-fertilisation is 
here again imperative. 
I have already alluded to the risks run by plants 
whose flowers are so fitted to prevent self-fertilisation ; 
but no doubt the species is always taken care of by 
a few flowers varying from the prevailing conditions. 
Thus, if the stigmas of a few flowers matured very 
quickly after the anthers shed the pollen—that is, 
before it could all be carried away by insects—self- 
fertilisation would certainly be effected. There are a 
number of species in this family that bear indications 
of having once been cross-fertilised, but evidently 
finding that such a condition was not the best suited 
to their particular mode of life have abandoned it in 
