104 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



greenish calyx or cup, and they contain within them 

 ten stamens or pollen-bags, as well as a tiny cap- 

 sule like a miniature pea-pod. At the tip of this 

 capsule is a small hook the sensitive surface on 

 which the pollen has to be deposited. You would 

 say at first sight that under such circumstances, 

 male and females being mixed up in one, cross- 

 fertilisation must be impossible that each flower 

 must surely be fertilised by its own pollen. But 

 the clever clovers have invented an ingenious little 

 device of their own for overcoming this difficulty : 

 the pollen-bags and the sensitive surface of the 

 capsule do not arrive at maturity together. In 

 this way each flower or plant gets fertilised itself 

 at one time by pollen from another plant, and at 

 another time dusts the bee that visits it with its 

 own pollen, which the bee transfers in due course 

 to the next plant it visits. 1 



No. 6 represents part of a plant of Dutch clover 

 the common white clover of our meadows and 

 pastures. It is called Dutch, not I believe because 

 it is particularly common in Holland more than in 

 other European countries, but because the prudent 

 Dutch were the first agriculturists to collect and 

 export the seed of this particular clover separated 

 from all other seeds of similar but less useful 

 species. It happens to be a particularly good 

 fodder plant, and it grew wild originally through- 

 out the whole of Europe and temperate Asia, from 

 the Mediterranean to the north of Norway. But 



1 I hope technical botanists will forgive me some slight but unimpor- 

 tant simplifications in this not entirely accurate mode of presentation. 



