INTRODUCTION 9 



veils enshrouding the truth, but Darwin, in 1859, 

 lifted them completely away. In a book that year 

 published he showed conclusively, and beyond any 

 doubt, that not only did the bees and insects carry 

 the pollen of flowers, but that they carried it from 

 the anthers of one flower to the pistil of another; 

 that this plan gave vigour and adaptability to the 

 species, and that many flowers possessed ingenious 

 mechanisms to protect their stigmas from the touch 

 of their own pollen, and to insure the transporta- 

 tion of it to another flower. 



This Darwin called "cross-fertilisation," and he 

 was able to prove that this great scheme and pur- 

 pose pervaded the whole realm of the Floral King- 

 dom. This was the great Mystery of the Flowers 

 which Nature had at last revealed. 



Since Darwin's theory of cross-fertilisation was 

 announced many students have investigated, with 

 powerful microscopes, the action of the pollen after 

 it reaches the stigma of a flower, and have restricted 

 to this action the term "fertilisation" ; the bringing 

 of the pollen and placing it upon the stigma they 

 call "pollination." But this latter is an awkward 

 and unfamiliar word, and, as none can deny that 

 cross-pollination ultimately brings about cross-fer- 

 tilisation, in the earlier part of our studies we will 

 stick to the older and more familiar term, using it in 



