FLORAL DIPLOMACY. 63 



flowers have such marvellous diversity. The de- 

 sirability of being " crossed," because of the greater 

 certainty that more and stronger seeds will be the 

 result, — from which may possibly spring a succeeding 

 generation of plants even more robust than their 

 ancestors, — is as important an element in the life of an 

 individual plant as it is for man to work and save, 

 so that his children may be better placed in society. 



But if all plants adopted the same contrivances 

 to be crossed, there would be a painful floral mono- 

 tony. Some flowers might then be large and others 

 small, but there would be nothing of the amazing 

 varieties of floral shapes, colours, and perfumes, we 

 see everywhere around us. 



No person possessed of even the most rudi- 

 mentary knowledge of flowers can help grouping 

 them under two kinds — attractive and non-attractive. 

 It has just been mentioned that many of the latter 

 are so because they are self-fertilised. But this latter 

 class is slenderly represented, so that we may leave 

 it out of our calculation just now. Observe the 

 number of plants, shrubs, and trees, which bear 

 flowers so thoroughly deprived of all the organs 

 and qualities with which we associate them, that 

 many people express surprise when they hear they 

 bear flowers at all. Among our British plants such 

 species as the Dog's Mercury, the Nettles, Wild Hop, 

 Pellitory, Hazel, Birch, Poplar, Alder, Oak, etc., as well 

 as an immense number of species of grasses, sedges, 



