WILD HYACINTHS. 27 



that one peculiar mode of insect fertilization. Its color 

 alone might give one a hint of its nature ; for blue is 

 the special hue affected by bees, and developed for the 

 most part by their selective agency. All the simplest 

 and most primitive flowers are yellow ; those a little 

 above them in the scale have usually become white ; 

 those rather more evolved are generally red or pink ; 

 and the highest grade of all, the blossoms peculiarly 

 modified for bees and butterflies, are almost always blue 

 or purple. Xow, one cannot look closely at a wild hya- 

 cinth without perceiving that it has undergone a good 

 deal of modification. It is, in fact, a very high type of 

 its 'own class. It belongs to that great family of flow r ers 

 whose parts were originally arranged in rows of threes ; 

 but this original arrangement it almost seems at first sight 

 to have doubled. Count the parts, and you will find 

 that it has now six blue petals, with six stamens, one 

 stamen being gummed on, as it were, to each petal ; 

 while in the middle there is a single unripe pale-blue 

 seed-vessel. But in the primitive ancestor of all these 

 trinary flowers one half of all flowering plants there 

 were three calyx pieces, three petals, three outer sta- 

 mens, three inner stamens, and three seed-vessels. How, 

 then, are w r e to account for these divergences in the 

 modern wild hyacinth ? 



Why, if one looks closely it does not require much 

 imagination to see the threefold arrangement still in full 

 force, very little masked by small modifications. A 

 pocket-knife will often clear up a great many of these 

 difficulties ; and if the unripe seed-vessel of the wild 

 hyacinth be cut in two, the section at once shows that it 

 consists of three cells, united at their edges, and each 

 full of seeds. As Mrs. Malaprop would say, it is really 

 three distinct seed-vessels rolled into one. Such union 



