276 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
with a very distinct division of the corolla into an 
upper and a lower lip. When the purple flower opens, 
the four stamens are ripe, and extend considerably 
beyond its mouth, whilst the style is short, and its 
two stigma-lobes are pressed together and immature. 
The plentiful honey is accessible to many insects 
owing to the open character of the corolla, and the 
organs being extended beyond the mouth of the 
flowers, and these densely gathered into cymes, the 
carriage of pollen by the insects that erawl from 
flower to flower is insured. After the pollen is shed, 
the style lengthens until 1t is larger than the stamens, 
and then the stigma-lobes spread apart and equally 
come in the way of insects. Here again we find 
smaller flowers with the stamens in an aborted con- 
dition; but in this case the large and the small 
flowers are borne by different plants. 
A precisely similar state of affairs is discovered in 
the more humble Wild Thyme (Thymus serpyllum), 
whose rosy-purple blossoms have a compensation for 
their smaller size in thei sweeter fragrance and 
scented honey, which causes them to be more readily 
found and their locality remembered by honey-seek- 
ing insects. Just as there are female flowers (those 
in which the stamens are aborted), there appears to 
be a tendency to produce male flowers, for in some of 
the larger form the style never matures. Wild Thyme 
has completely lost the power of self-fertilisation. 
In spite of its extremely low stature it is a shrub. 
We have two native species of Sage (Salvia), of 
which the larger and more interesting is unfortun- 
ately rare. This is the Meadow Sage (S. pratensis), 
which bears its bright-blue flowers horizontally in 
