82 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



flowering Campion {Lychnis vespertina), etc. The 

 odours of these flowers are always emitted most 

 powerfully at night ; and white flowers bear away 

 the palm in the competition with those of other 

 colours for including the largest number of species 

 possessing sweet perfumes. This of itself is a sig- 

 nificant fact, in view of moth-fertilisation. 



One of the latest discoveries of the eminent 

 botanist, the late Dr. Hermann Miiller, was to ex- 

 plain the cause of double colours in flowers, such as 

 are most strikingly shown, perhaps, in our Viper's 

 Bugloss {Echittm vttlgare)^ but which are also well 

 known in the various species of Forget-me-nots 

 {Myosotis), the Lungwort {Pulmonaria officinalis), 

 Comfrey, and many other species of the Boraginacece 

 — which natural order seems to have distinguished 

 itself by its floral development. In the Viper's Bug- 

 loss and the Lungwort the flowers are red and blue. 

 The former colour is assumed ^r^/, and blue as the 

 flowers get older. Dr. Miiller proved from examina- 

 tion that all the blue flowers were empty of honey, 

 and that the stigmas of their pistils were supplied 

 with pollen — in fact, they had all been visited and 

 fertilised by insects. He therefore concluded that the 

 blue colours, whilst increasing the conspicuousness of 

 the floral clusters, at the same time indicated to such 

 intelligent bees as Anthropho7'a which flowers they 

 should restrict their visits to, so that neither they nor 

 the flowers might suffer from the loss of time that 



