REVIEW FLOWERS : THEIR ORIGIN, ETC, 221 



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Flowers: their Origin, Shapes, Perfumes, and Colours. By J. E. Taylor, 

 Ph.D., F.L.S., F.G.S., &c., illustrated by thirty-two coloured figures, 

 by Sowerby, and 161 woodcuts. London : Hardwicke and Bogue. 

 Price 7s. 6d. 

 The very interesting book, the title of which is given above, is written 

 by the well-known Editor of " Hardwioke's Science G-ossip." It is 

 intended chiefly for such as have the desire but lack time and opportunity 

 to make themselves acquainted with the varied and suggestive results of 

 modern botanical investigation, otherwise than second hand. Dr. Taylor 

 has summarised the more important of these results, and done so in a 

 manner which will please most botanists and impart valuable and novel 

 ideas to many whose knowledge of the recent labours of Dr. Charles 

 Darwin and others is but limited. The first chapter is devoted to a 

 consideration of what the author calls the old and new philosophy of 

 flowers. The former had for one of the principal articles of its behef 

 that flowers and plants in general were created solely for the delight 

 or use of man. The teachings of the latter put this consideration in 

 a subordinate place, and indicate that all the qualities possessed by 

 plants of every description, flowering and flowerless, but especially the 

 former, are just those which are of essential importance to the plants 

 themselves. " Thus," to quote our author — 



" Most flowers reqnh-e crossius;, and the floral machinery of even our 

 common British wild flowers is of the most uulooked for ami complex description, 

 usually designed to prevent self-fertilisatiou and encourage or ensure crossing. 

 Among some of the chief of these devices may be mentioned the following : — 

 Absolute barrenness when the pistil is fertilised by the pollen of the adjacent 

 stamens ; pistils ripening before the stamens, or stamens before the pistil ; 

 dimorphism and trimorphism, or flowers possessing pistils and stamens of two 

 and three lengths, all intended for the special purpose of crossing; the 

 existence of monoscious and dioecious flowers, or those in which we have 

 staminate and pistillate flowers on the same plant, but with the pistils and 

 stamens separated from one another, and those in which one plant bears 

 staminate flowers only and the other pistillate flowers. Most of these con- 

 trivances are not of a nature to invite attention ; and some of them have 

 escaped the notice of botanists for years, or had been remarked without being 

 understood. We can, therefore, readily understand why they should be passed 

 over by those who are totally ignorant of botanical structures. And yet it 

 is these very organs and their arrangement on which the perpetuity of the 



species depends The colours and perfumes, and in many instances 



even the shapes of flowers, have reference only to the visits of insects. 

 And in proportion to the brilliancy or size of the corolla, or the sweetness of 

 the perfume, is the necessity of the plants possessing them to be crossed. On 

 the other hand, inconspicuous flowers are either self-fertilised or only 

 occasionally require to be crossed ; whilst the largest number of flowers, such as 

 the grasses, sedges, rushes, &c., have no corolla at all, and do not require insect 

 aid to carry the pollen from plant to plant, so as to beneficially cross them. 

 Modern botanists find it comparatively easy to group all plants into two great 

 divisions — those crossed or fertilised by insects and those by the wind. The 

 terms entomophilous and anemopihiJous are applied respectively to these two 

 classes To such an extreme is the division between wind and insect- 

 fertilised flowers carried out, that the microscopist can, without much difiiculty, 

 assign even pollen-grains to one or the other of these groups. Thus, the pollen 

 usually produced by entomophilous plants have their surfaces roughened over 

 with minute points or other means of readily attaching them to the hairy 



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