FLORAL MECHANISMS 83 



complex, but many less rare flowers display equal 

 versatility and cunning. On every botanical ex- 

 cursion I have discovered some secret trick, new 

 to me, hidden in the calyx of some common flower, 

 and I suspect that there are many hundreds of 

 such delightful surprises yet awaiting us afield. 



The nightshade puffs its pollen from a minia- 

 ture bellows, the Oswego tea catches the bee in a 

 miniature lasso, the cardinal flower pushes out 

 pollen like chopped meat from a sausage stufFer, 

 the mountain laurel shoots it as from a catapult, 

 and the milkweed hangs its pollen on the leg of 

 the bee, like a ball-and-chain, if it does not hold 

 him altogether a prisoner. 



The strange and surprising mechanisms with 

 which the flowers make sure of their own cross- 

 fertilisation are so various and so dissimilar that 

 I become bewildered in attempting to classify them. 

 Every flower seems to be a law unto itself, and to 

 have worked out a scheme of its own to delude the 

 unsuspecting insect. Some flowers have developed 

 simple devices for protecting the stigma from its 

 own pollen. Then there are arrangements like pis- 

 tons for pushing forward the pollen, so that it will 

 be gathered before the stigma is ready for any. In 

 other cases the stamens move as if they were living 

 tentacles, or springs of a catapult, to dust the visi- 



