222 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



the scattered pollen, as if a light snow shower had 

 fallen." 



Such an enormous sacrifice of detached substances, 

 rich in the elements plants find it hardest to obtain, 

 can only be afforded by comparatively few. By far 

 the greater number have to be content with less 

 expenditure, and some are even nowadays slowly 

 falling into arrears, until the cleistogamic habit will 

 have to be adopted to save them from utter extinc- 

 tion. By hoarding up every grain of pollen, self- 

 fertilisation is ensured, and seeds are thus produced 

 in tolerable abundance. As Darwin says {Forms of 

 Flowers) : " Cleistogamic flowers afford an abundant 

 supply of seeds with little expenditure, and we can 

 hardly doubt that they have had their structure 

 modified and degraded for this special purpose." 



The degree to which this degradation of the 

 usual floral organs is carried out in cleistogamic 

 flowers varies considerably. Some Violets have 

 suppressed three out of the five of their stamens, so 

 that only two now produce pollen within the " closed 

 walls" of the never- opening flowers. We also find 

 the petals of cleistogamic flowers in every stage of 

 abortion. Some are almost perfect, as in the cleisto- 

 gamic flowers of the Grass Pea {Lathy riis nissolici) ; 

 in others, as the Violets, we have a mere trace, 

 whilst in the closed flowers of the Wood Sorrel and 

 White Dead Nettle they are entirely obliterated. 



But in this bitter fight with poverty there is a 



