The Daisy's Pedigree. 23 



look aside for a moment at the way in which they 

 have been produced, in order rightly to understand 

 the ancestry of the daisy. 



No pistil ever grows into a perfect fruit or sets ripe 

 and good seeds until it is fertilised by a grain of pollen 

 from a stamen of its own kind. In some plants the 

 pollen is simply allowed to fall from the stamens on 

 to the pistil of the same flower ; but plants thus self- 

 fertilised are not so strong or so hearty as those 

 which are cross-fertilised by the pollen of another. 

 The first system resembles m its bad effect the habit 

 of ' breeding in and in ' among animals, or of too 

 close intermarriages among human beings ; while the 

 second system produces the same beneficial results as 

 those of cross-breeding, or the introduction of ' fresh 

 blood ' in the animate world. Hence, any early 

 plants which happened to be so constituted as to 

 allow of easy cross-fertilisation would be certain to 

 secure stronger and better seedlings than their self- 

 fertilised neighbours ; and wherever any peculiar form 

 or habit has tended to encourage this mode of setting 

 seeds, the plants have always prospered and thriven 

 exceedingly in the struggle for existence with their 

 less fortunate congeners. A large number of flowers 

 have thus become specially adapted for fertilisation 

 by the wind, as we see in the case of catkins and 



