i8 MOUNTAIN AND MOORLAND 



creatures into a tube and took them home. We after- 

 wards saw babies come out of the trailer, but we never 

 found time to learn much about them. Some day we 

 should like to find them again and make their acquaint- 

 ance better. Their learned name is Orthezia, and they 

 belong to the Order Hemiptera. We do not fancy 

 that their life is wildly exciting, but creatures that have 

 got hold of the idea of a perambulator with the babies 

 in it are worth knowing. 



By the side of the track we were following the sheep 

 had here and there rubbed hollows in the slope, and in 

 the loose, well-drained soil above these places for cud- 

 chewing and shelter we saw tufts of the Rock Rose 

 (H elianthemum vulgare) with the delicate yellow 

 flowers fully expanded in the bright sunshine. When 

 a cloud comes overhead or when there is a fall of 

 temperature the blossoms close up. When the sun 

 shines they move their heads towards it. If one peers 

 into the flower in the sunshine one sees that there are 

 numerous stamens rather crowded together round the 

 central pistil; and if one touches them with the tip of 

 one's little finger they all spread out towards the cir- 

 cumference. It gives us peculiar pleasure to do this to 

 flower after flower, and we must ask, Why ? Perhaps, 

 if we know the story, it is because there is a fitness in 

 the outward movement of the stamens. The move- 

 ment takes place in natural conditions when the appro- 

 priate insect visitor settles down on the flower which, 

 by the way, has no nectar. The movement of the 

 stamens secures the dusting of the visitor's body with 

 pollen. Therefore, when another Rock Rose flower is 

 visited, the stigma is likely to have pollen landed upon 

 it; and this secures the fertilisation (or pollination) 



