256 Mr. T. H. Farrer on the manner of 
are not given, there is a reference to that flower which shows 
clearly enough that they had not escaped him. 
Whatever these facts are worth, they are the obvious results 
of Mr. Darwin’s own most suggestive papers on Primula, 
Linum, and Lythrum, referred to in such high terms by 
Dr. Hooker in his Norwich address. To an amateur, dismayed 
by the difficulties of botanical classification, perplexed by his 
own incapacity for microscopical dissection, and disgusted by 
the mere cataloguing of species, Mr. Darwin’s suggestion that 
the true account of the structure and functions of flowers is 
frequently to be found in their capacity for fertilization, and 
especially in their capacity for cross fertilization with the pollen 
of other flowers, is a ray of light which opens out an endless field 
of interesting observation. And to those who look in science 
for wider speculations, the grand generalization contained in 
these and other papers of Mr. Darwin’s, to the effect that fer- 
tility in the animal and vegetable world requires the union of 
elements which are neither identical nor dissimilar, but dif- 
ferent and yet similar, with all its consequences, affords end- 
less matter for thought, whilst it receives life and reality from 
the minute observations of details in which his papers abound, 
_ and of which they set such wonderful and stimulating exam- 
ples. I know of no writings which so well illustrate the axiom 
of the great German poet and observer— 
“ Was fruchtbar ist, allein ist wahr.” 
Sept. 17, 1868. T. H. Farrer. 
Mechanism for transporting Pollen in the Scarlet Runner 
(Phaseolus coccineus). 
The two wings are united to the back and outside of the 
keel some little distance above the base of both; their blades 
fold backwards from the centre towards the outside, and, by 
the bending of the spiral keel, with the pistil and stamens in- 
side it, the wings are thrust a little to the right hand, so that 
the folded or bent blade of the left wing is opposite to the coil 
of the keel, and is the natural place on which any insect seeking 
to reach the bottom of the flower would alight. ‘The lower parts 
or claws of the wings remain upright, and are firm and elastic. 
The keel encloses the stamens and pistil from a point a little 
above the ovary, and at the upper end the margins are joined 
so as to form an imperfect tube: it makes together with them 
nearly two complete turns, of which the upper one and a half 
lie close above one another in the same plane. This plane is 
inclined at a small angle to the blade of the left wing, and is 
so placed that the mouth of the spiral tube points obliquely 
