142 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



s 



heads tlie many thousand known species may be roughly 

 classified. The daisy tribe, as we all know, took to 

 producing mostly yellow florets, with white or pink 

 outer rays, to allure their special insect allies. The dan- 

 delion tribe turned all its florets throughout the entire 

 Iiead into long rays, like the external row in the daisies, 

 and colored them uniformly yellow throughout, on 

 behalf of the little yellow-loving flies by whom its seeds 

 are usually fertilized. But the thistles, the central 

 tribe of all, retained more simply the original habits of the 

 race, in that all their florets are still tubular, instead of 

 being split out into strap-shaped rays ; while the vast 

 majority of them keep as yet to the primitive purple 

 tinctures of their race, which specially endear them to 

 the higher insects. Bees are the chief fertilizers of 

 thistle-heads ; but butterflies also frequently pay them a 

 visit ; and in the Home Close at the present moment 

 they are being attended by thousands of little black and 

 red burnet moths, which prefer the long bell -shaped 

 blossoms even to that favorite flower with them, the 

 bird's-foot trefoil. Almost every head in the field is 

 covered by half a dozen moths at once, all drinking 

 nectar from the recesses of the deep long tube, and all 

 unconsciously carrying pollen from stem to stem on their 

 uncoiled proboscis. 



But even after the thistle tribe had separated from its 

 sister-composites of the daisy and dandelion groups, it wap 

 far from having reached the fully developed thistly 

 type. The lower members of the tribe have no prickles, 

 and some of them are very simple unarmed weeds in- 

 deed. The common sawwort, which abounds in copses 

 and hangers in the south of England, represents the 

 first rough draft of a thistle in this nascent condition. 

 To look at, it is very thistle-like indeed, especially in its 



