FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS 



on examination the mechanism by which it is to be 

 accomplished, however varied in form and color it 

 may be made, or however obscured by apparently 

 needless replication of some parts or obliteration of 

 others. 



It is not at first sight very obvious why, in the 

 economy of nature, it should be necessary, or rather 

 that it should be so very often the case, that two sep- 

 arate individual plant lives should take part in the 

 production of the fruits or seeds from which spring 

 the existence of a new plant of the higher orders. 

 As we have seen, the lower plants, the bacteria, the 

 lower fungi and algse, are non-sexual ; yet even among 

 the higher order of the Cryptograma sexual repro- 

 duction becomes more general as their evolution ad- 

 vances In the Phanerogama it is universal. It is 

 true that in many flowers both the Stamen (male) 

 and the Pistil (female) are present, the flowers being 

 hermaphrodite ; but in almost every instance the 

 pistil is so conditioned or placed that the pollen from 

 the stamens of the same flower cannot reach it, and 

 fertilization can only occur by the pollen coming from 

 a distant flower. The reason probably is that the 

 florescence of a plant is exhausting to its vitality, 

 possibly from the excessive consumption of certain 

 constituent molecules, sometimes in one direction, 

 sometimes in another. The joint lives of two organ 



259 



