6S SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



group are gradually giving up, or have already given 

 up, their ancient habit, and are taking to self-fertil- 

 isation, like the Bee Orchis. Many of the grasses, 

 rushes, etc., and such peculiar species as the Pringlea^ 

 have become wind-fertilised ; whilst some wind-fertil- 

 ised kinds have advanced a stage, and are visited by 

 insects because their flowers have become more attract- 

 ive, as the catkins of the Willow. It is probable that, 

 in the order of their geological appearance upon the 

 globe, the wind-fertilised {anemophiloiLs) flowers pre- 

 ceded the insect-fertilised {entomophilous). It is very 

 certain the latter have increased more abundantly 

 than the former within the most recent of geological 

 periods, because that is precisely the time when insects 

 have multiplied and developed. And with the mul- 

 tiplication and differentiation of insects has gone on, 

 pari passu, the specialisation of flowers. 



No department of modern botany is more delight- 

 fully attractive than that devoted to the study of how 

 both of these great divisions of plants have succeeded 

 in employing wind and insect agencies to assist in 

 cross-fertilising their flowers. This end has been 

 accomplished with various degrees of success, just as 

 animals differ among themselves in the amount of 

 sagacity they possess. But the beaver does not dis- 

 play more instinct in constructing its dam, the bee 

 in the manipulation of its geometrically-shaped comb, 

 or the white ants in the erection of their habitations, 

 than flowers do to attract insects to themselves, to point 



