CHAP. VII GYNO-DKECIOUS PLANTS. 303 



not one could be found to which pollen-grains of 

 thyme did not adhere. The seeds were carefully 

 collected from the eleven female plants, and they 

 weighed 98 7 grains ; and those from the seven her- 

 maphrodites 36 '5 grains. This gives for an equal 

 number of plants the ratio of 100 to 58 ; and we 

 here see, as in the last case, how much more fertile 

 the females are than the hermaphrodites. These two 

 lots of seeds were sown separately in two adjoining 

 beds, and the seedlings from both the hermaphro- 

 dite and female parent-plants consisted of both forms. 

 Satureia hortensis. Eleven seedlings were raised in 

 separate pots in a hotbed and afterwards kept in the 

 green -house. They consisted of ten females and of 

 a single hermaphrodite. Whether or not the condi- 

 tions to which they had been subjected caused the great 

 excess of females I do not know. In the females the 

 pistil is rather longer than that of the hermaphrodite, 

 and the stamens are mere rudiments, with minute 

 colourless anthers destitute of pollen. The windows 

 of the green-house were left open, and the flowers 

 were incessantly visited by humble and hive bees. 

 Although the ten females did not produce a single 

 grain of pollen, yet they were all thoroughly well 

 fertilised by the one hermaphrodite plant, and this 

 is an interesting fact. It should be added that no 

 other plant of this species grew in my garden. The 

 seeds were collected from the finest female plant, 

 and they weighed 78 grains; whilst those from the 

 hermaphrodite, which was a rather larger plant than 

 the female, weighed only 33 '2 grains ; that is, in the 

 ratio of 100 to 43. The female form, therefore, is very 

 much more fertile than the hermaphrodite, as in the two 

 last cases ; but the hermaphrodite was necessarily self- 

 fertilised, and this probably diminished its fertility. 



