i68 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



Guelder Rose ( Viburnum opiihis), are clustered in 

 great numbers. The grouping of the latter species 

 is remarkable for the increased size of the outer 

 circle of flowers — a normal condition, to which every 

 member of the entire collection attains when the 

 Guelder Rose is grown in our gardens, where its 

 " snowballs " of flowers are prominent and pretty 

 objects. But in the natural state all these large 

 •^ outer flowers are barren. Their size has been in- 

 creased for the benefit of their brethren, so as to 

 render them more conspicuous to insects, but they 

 have sacrificed their own fecundity. Floral altruism 

 is a fact in the vegetable kingdom, only found in 

 the most differentiated floral societies ; just as 

 we meet with it only in the highest -developed of 

 humanity, although we anticipate it will be still more 

 developed as mankind grows out of its lower into its 

 higher life ! 



This principle (for I cannot call it by any other 

 name) is carried out in the highest degree among 

 the Composites, and especially in that division of the 

 order called tubuliflorcBy of which the Daisy, Dahlia, 

 Chrysanthemum, Chamomile, Sunflower, etc., are 

 familiar examples. It need hardly be stated now 

 that these objects are not single flowers — but colonies 

 or collections of small flowers, all arranged on a disk 

 or head ; as may be best observed in the Sun- 

 flowers of our gardens, where both the florets and 

 the disk attain their largest sizes. Hundreds of 



