SEPTEMBER 231 



but one might as well pass an Act for the prevention of 

 midges. So long as ferns and roots of wild-flowers find 

 purchasers, there will be legions of pilferers. It is in the 

 power of every lover of nature in some infinitesimal degree 

 to discourage the traffic by refusing henceforward to buy 

 any roots of ferns or wild -flowers offered for sale either in 

 Covent Garden or the streets. The legitimate purveyors 

 of plants are the nurserymen who propagate them. 



XXXIV 



Once, in the course of these very desultory notes, I 

 described the beautiful mechanism whereby ^^g^^^ 

 cross-fertilisation is secured in the great blue intelligence 

 sage (Salvia patens}, which we in the west are 

 able to grow as a hardy herbaceous plant. If a stem of 

 grass is pushed down the throat of one of the blossoms, 

 two long stamens, their anthers charged with ripe golden 

 pollen, move down from their concealment in the upper 

 lobe of the corolla, and, in Mexico, the native country of 

 this plant, would deposit part of their burden upon the 

 head or back of some winged visitor, which, flying off to 

 the neighbouring blossoms, would effect the desired 

 exchange of pollen. Whatever the creature be, it has 

 not accompanied the blue sage to these latitudes. It 

 must be of slender build, or, at all events, have a long 

 trunk or tongue, such as a humming-bird's or hawk- 

 moth's ; for although there is a good store of honey in 

 the azure blooms, it lies deep down the narrow tube at 

 the base of the pistils, and none of our native winged 

 insects seem to be of a build to reach it in the legitimate 

 way. I described also how I had found in certain gardens, 



