1858.] OF FLOWERS. 26l 



seeds, without pollen be put on the stigma (whereas the small 

 blue Lobelia is visited by bees and does set seed) ; I mention 

 this because there are such beautiful contrivances to prevent 

 the stigma ever getting its own pollen ; which seems only 

 explicable on the doctrine of the advantage of crosses." , 



The paper was supplemented by a second in 1858.* The 

 chief object of these publications seems to have been to 

 obtain information as to the possibility of growing varieties 

 of leguminous plants near each other, and yet keeping 

 them true. It is curious that the Papilionaceae should not 

 only have been the first flowers which attracted his attention 

 by their obvious adaptation to the visits of insects, but should 

 also have constituted one of his sorest puzzles. The common 

 pea and the sweet pea gave him much difficulty, because, 

 although they are as obviously fitted for insect-visits as the 

 rest of the order, yet their varieties keep true. The fact is 

 that neither of these plants being indigenous, they are not 

 perfectly adapted for fertilisation by British insects. He 

 could not, at this stage of his observations, know that the 

 co-ordination between a flower and the particular insect 

 which fertilises it may be as delicate as that between a lock 

 and its key, so that this explanation was not likely to occur 

 to him.f 



Besides observing the Leguminosae, he had already begun, 

 as shown in the foregoing extracts, to attend to the structure 

 of other flowers in relation to insects. At the beginning of 

 1860 he worked at Leschenaultia,J which at first puzzled him, 



* Gardeners' Chronicle, 1858, in the habits of insects. He pub- 



p. 828. In 1 86 1 another paper on lished a short note in the Entomo- 



Fertilisation appeared in the Gar- logisfs Weekly Intelligencer, 1860, 



deners 1 Chronicle, p. 552, in which asking whether the Tineina and 



he explained the action of insects other small moths suck flowers, 



on Vinca major. He was attracted % He published a short paper on 



to the periwinkle by the fact that it the manner of fertilisation of this 



is not visited by insects and never flower, in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 



sets seeds. 1871, p. 1166. 



t He was of course alive to variety 



