VARIOUS MARRIAGE CUSTOMS. 91 



will probably be with pollen of another kind, so 

 that the result will be, not a perfect plant, but a 

 miserable hybrid, ill adapted for any conditions. 

 Hence plants usually possess advanced devices 

 for keeping off ants and other climbing thieves 

 from their precious honey. Hairs on the stalk 

 and calyx are enough to secure this object in the 

 meadow buttercup, which has a tall stem, and 

 therefore is not so easily climbed ; for the hairs, 

 small as they look to us, prove to the ant a per- 

 fect forest of underwood. But in the early 

 bulbous buttercup, which has a shorter stem, and 

 the smell of whose honey is therefore more allur- 

 ing to the groundling ant, this device is not alone 

 sufficient ; so the calyx on opening turns down its 

 separate sepals close against the stem in such a 

 way as to form a sort of lobster-pot, out of which 

 the creeping insect can never extricate himself. 



Inside the calyx-layer of five sepals comes 

 next the corolla-layer of five petals. These petals, 

 as we saw, are the attractive business advertise- 

 ment of the flower ; they contain at the base of 

 each a tiny honey-gland or nectary, which is cov- 

 ered by a scale or small inner petal, so to speak, 

 to protect it from the attacks of thievish insects. 

 But when the bee or other proper fertilising agent 

 arrives at the flower, he lights on the set of carpels 

 in the very centre of the blossom, and proceeds to 

 go straight for the little store of honey. As he does 

 so, he turns gradually round all over the carpels, 

 and dusts himself with pollen from the ripe sta- 

 mens. 



And now we must notice another curious 

 device for ensuring cross-fertilisation in many 

 flowers. In the bulbous buttercup the stamens 

 and carpels do not gorne to maturity together j 



