224 SOME FLOWERING SHRUBS 



of co-operation and advertisement. We have heard with 

 our ears and our fathers have told us that flowers were 

 designed for the double purpose of glorifying God and 

 delighting man. Modern science shrugs contemptuous 

 shoulders; the glory of God, it thinks, is able to take 

 care of itself, and as for man, let him find what pleasure 

 he may in flowers, but their primary purpose is to adver- 

 tise the wares they produce for the attraction of insect 

 customers. Of those plants which depend for the fertilisa- 

 tion of their seeds upon the visits of insects, that plant 

 will flourish on the earth which can attract insects most 

 surely. Shall we have great flaming posters, compara- 

 tively few in number, like the Allamanda and the 

 Romneya, or swarms of little paragraphs, individually 

 inconspicuous? The Composites have adopted, or been 

 assigned, the system of small and multitudinous adver- 

 tisement ; but whereas these might be overlooked if they 

 were scattered singly among the leaves, the plant ensures 

 attention by crowding all the advertisements together at 

 the top of the stem. That is the plan of the thistles, 

 dandelions, tansy, and many others, but the majority of 

 Composites have carried it much further. Take the head 

 of a sunflower or a daisy the disc of each is made up 

 of hundreds of perfect florets crowded into close com- 

 pany. Round the circumference of this disc are ranged 

 other florets which have converted themselves into mere 

 flags, generally of a different colour to the central com- 

 pany. Thus the brown disc of the sunflower is set round 

 with golden rays, the yellow disc of the daisy with white 

 and crimson- tipped ones, the yellow of the aster with 

 violet rays, and so on. These ray-florets have sacrificed 

 their sex in the interest of the community : they contain 



