170 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
our early forefathers were in a very low stage of 
civilisation—living chiefly upon roots, herbs, and 
wild fruits—or they would never have experimented 
with it. Yet the changed conditions with which 
cultivation has surrounded it, coupled with the 
careful selection of the most promising variations to 
serve as seed-bearers, have combined to give us what 
is practically a new plant. Few who are not inti- 
mately acquainted with the comparatively plastic 
character of most forms of life, and know how they 
may be modified by selection and changed environ- 
ment, would imagine that the thin, dry stick of a 
rootstock found in the wild plant was the raw 
material from which the art of cultivation has 
produced such varieties as James’ Intermediate and 
Long Horn. 
Some species with large and striking umbels are 
visited by great numbers of insects by which cross- 
fertilisation is effected simply by walking over many 
of the flowers and getting well dusted with pollen, 
which is afterwards conveyed to other umbels. As 
we should expect to find from a consideration of the 
open disks upon which the honey is spread, this 
family is not favoured by long-tongued insects like 
butterflies, moths, and bees, yet swarms with flies and 
small beetles. 
