MARRIAGE AMONG THE CLOVERS 103 



are devices of the mother to protect her young. 

 You will thus perceive that the begonia has its 

 friends and its enemies in the insect world, and 

 that while it does its best to conciliate the one, it 

 is no less anxious to repel the other. We shall 

 find in the sequel that precisely the same thing is 

 true of the clovers. 



To the clovers then, which are our proper sub- 

 ject, I will next proceed. And I began with the 

 begonia by way of introduction, only because that 

 afforded us a case in which the husbands and wives 

 of the community were so distinct from one another 

 that nobody with a pair of eyes in his head could 

 fail to distinguish them when they were once 

 pointed out to him. In the clovers, on the other 

 hand, we have a much more complicated arrange- 

 ment, and one much less like the ordinary cases 

 with which we are familiar in the animal world. 

 Here, the flowers are collected in heads or clusters, 

 and each flower is in itself at once both male and 

 female. This method, indeed, is common amongst 

 plants ; it occurs in by far the greater number of 

 species: the reason why I started with the begonia 

 is just because in that type the sexes are so well 

 and clearly separated in distinct blossoms. In the 

 clovers, however, each separate flower resembles 

 a small pea-blossom in shape, having four petals, 

 which botanists name respectively, from below 

 upwards, the keel, the two wings, and the stan- 

 dard. These petals are best seen in the single 

 upstanding flower (or " old maid ") represented in 

 No. 9. They are enclosed beneath in a small 



