84 THE STORY OF THE PLANTS. 



outer cup of the flower ; but, as we shall see here- 

 after, it serves many other useful purposes from 

 time to time in various kinds of flowers. In the 

 fuchsia, for example, it is quite as brilliantly col- 

 oured as the petals of the corolla, and supple- 

 ments them in the work of attracting insects. In 

 the winter cherry or Cape gooseberry it forms a 

 brilliant outer envelope or covering for the fruit, 

 which the French call '■'■cerise en chemise^'' or 

 "cherry in its nightdress." Other uses of both 

 calyx and corolla will come out by and by, as we 

 proceed to examine individual instances. 



" But why," you may ask, " do the plants want 

 to get pollen carried from plant to plant ? Why 

 can't each flower fertilise itself by letting its pol- 

 len fall upon its own pistil ?" Well, the question 

 is a natural one ; and, indeed, many flowers do 

 actually so fertilise themselves with their own 

 pollen. But such flowers are almost always poor 

 and degenerate kinds, the unsuccessful in the 

 race, the outcasts and street arabs of plant civili- 

 sation. All the higher, nobler, and more domi- 

 nant plants — the plants that have carved out for 

 themselves great careers in the world, and that 

 occupy the best posts in nature — have invented 

 some mode or other of cross-fertilisation, as it is 

 called, that is to say some plan by which the pol- 

 len of one plant or flower fertilises the pistil of 

 another. 



What does this mean ? Well, regarding the 

 plant as a colony, you will see at once that the 

 stamens and pistil of the same blossom stand to 

 one another somewhat in the relation of brothers 

 and sisters, while those of different flowers on the 

 same plant may be regarded at least in the light 

 of first cousins. Now the very same thing that 



