172 AUTUMN FLOWERS 



nary variety of its soil, could there be produced such a 

 varied company of autumn flowers as are gathered here 

 in the space of half an acre, between the marshy osier- 

 bed and the dry chalk-pit. 



The great blue salvia (Salvia patens) is not un- 

 common as a bedding-plant in our gardens, and its 

 splendid azure blossoms are a noble adornment to 

 autumnal borders. But it is only in the west that it 

 can be treated as a hardy herbaceous plant. There is 

 one under the window of my bedroom which has never 

 failed us during eighteen years, though it has never 

 received the slightest protection. This salvia possesses 

 a beautiful mechanism to secure cross - fertilisation. 

 Insert a stem of grass or a hairpin between the lips 

 of the flower, and push it gently down the throat, 

 and you will see the long stamens move down from 

 the upper lobe of the corolla so as to deposit ripe 

 pollen on the back of the supposed insect visitor. The 

 honey glands lie far down at the base of the pistil, and 

 our bumble-bees find it very difficult to reach it, for 

 they are corpulent, and the passage is narrow. In 

 Mexico, the native country of this plant, no doubt it is 

 visited either by some insect of slenderer build or by 

 humming-birds. But if our bumble-bees have no waists 

 to speak of, they have brains ; and they have discovered 

 the trick of biting through the neck of the flower, 

 opposite the honey store, and sucking it without further 

 trouble. Some years ago a new industry sprang up in 

 Buckinghamshire. Lads were sent to collect bumble- 

 bees alive, for which they received fourpence a-piece. 



