CHAPTER VII 



INSECTS AND FLOWERS THE RO- 

 MANCE OF PLANT FERTILIZATION 



THE intimate relations which exist between 

 flowers and insects form a theme of 

 absorbing and unending interest. It is a subject 

 which offers a wide field for observation and 

 investigation, and is one which richly rewards 

 the investigator, bringing him intimately into 

 touch with the complexity of the web of life, and 

 revealing to him the wonders of adaptation and 

 natural selection. From the opening of the first 

 flowers of spring until the cold winds of 

 approaching winter scatter the last petals to the 

 ground, there is an unbroken sequence of 

 subjects from which we may gather illustra- 

 tions of how the colours and forms of the wild 

 flowers have chiefly been brought about, by an 

 unconscious natural selection exercised by the 

 insects that visit them, and of how, through the 

 agency of these insect visitors, the flowers gain 

 the great advantage of cross-fertilization. 



With the coming of spring and the re- 

 awakening of plant and insect life, every country 

 ramble that we may take will afford us an 

 opportunity of observing the way in which the 



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