224 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



shown there are four varieties of Red Clover in New 

 Zealand, all of which produce seeds of good germin- 

 ating power. One variety is partly self- fertile and 

 partly self- sterile. The produce of those plants 

 which have been grown in the colony for several 

 generations tends almost invariably to become self- 

 fertilising. Mr. Armstrong thinks there is every 

 reason to believe that the Red Clover is also be- 

 coming modified in its structure, so as to admit the 

 visits of insects not known to visit it in England ; 

 and that such modification tends to render the plant 

 self- fertilising, but at the same time enables it to 

 be improved in constitutional vigour by occasional 

 inter-crossing. 



The seeds produced by so much hard thrift are 

 cared for and protected, just as devoted mothers 

 would protect the scanty meals of their offspring. 

 Darwin expresses the ingenuity with which they are 

 concealed from the greedy ^y^s> of birds or other 

 seed devourers : " It is one of the many remarkable 

 peculiarities of the plants which bear cleistogamic 

 flowers, that an incomparably larger proportion of 

 them than of ordinary plants bury their young ovaries 

 hi the ground — an action which, it may be presumed, 

 serves to protect them from being devoured by birds 

 or other enemies." Of course, as he also remarks, 

 they have to sacrifice all those advantages of wind 

 or animal agencies in their dissemination that we 

 have already noticed ; but it is nothing to the poor 



