FLORAL DLPLOMACY. 67 



So important is it for flowers to be crossed that 

 Darwin revived and somewhat modified an old say- 

 ing, by declaring that " Nature abhorred self-fertilisa- 

 tion." In our country, at least, if flowers are to be 

 effectually crossed, only two agents can perform such 

 a function — the wind and insects. The former 

 knows nothing of beauty of colour or sweetness of 

 perfume. Flowers habitually crossed by the wind 

 would literally " waste their sweetness on the desert 

 air," if they were to expend their much -required 

 energies in developing such attractions. Hence all 

 wind -fertilised or aneinophiloiis flowers are unat- 

 tractive. On the other hand, insects are possessed 

 of such a marvellous sense of smell that it is 

 probably their chief sense, and that by which they 

 gain their knowledge of the world around them. 

 It is to this acute sense the perfumes of flowers 

 appeal, whilst the mass of colour displayed by the 

 petals assists in directing the insects to the flowers. 

 Meantime the shapes of the latter are generally 

 related to the ease with which insects can alight 

 upon them. Botanists have done well in grouping 

 all the flowers of this class under the term entoino- 

 pJiiloiis^ or " insect-lovers." 



Still, there is no distinct hard-and-fast line between 

 these two divisions, extreme as they are ; for we find 

 numbers of species of plants whose flowers resort to 

 both agencies for crossing, as those of the Docks and 

 Plantains, for instance. Some of the insect-fertilised 



