HOW PLANTS MARRY. 



77 



not so much a single individual as a community 

 or colony. 



A hive of bees will help you to understand 

 this difficult paradox. I know it is difficult ; but, 

 if only you will face it, it will throw floods of 

 light in due time on parts of our subject we must 

 consider hereafter. 

 So let us look at it 

 close. A hive is a 

 community. It con- 

 sists for the most 

 part of workers, 

 who are practically 

 neither male nor fe- 

 male. They are 

 neuters, as we say ; 



and their main work FIG. 15. A flower, with its petals re- 

 is to find food for moved. Outside are five stamens, 

 T_ which produce pollen : in the centre 



the whole hive, in- is the pistilj which contains the 



eluding themselves ovules or young seeds. 



and the grubs or 



larvae which are the young of the species. But, in 

 addition to these workers, the hive has a queen, 

 who is the only perfect female, or mother, and who 

 lays the eggs from which the larvae are produced; 

 and it has also several drones, who are the males 

 of the community, and fathers of the larvae. Thus 

 we have a colony or city, as it were, consisting of 

 a few males, a single female, and a whole body of 

 worker or feeder neuters. 



Now, a higher plant, like a cherry-tree (to 

 take a particular example), is just such a colony 

 or joint community. The leaves, each of which 

 is a distinct and almost self-supporting individual, 

 are its workers and feeders. Like the worker 

 bees, too, the leaves are neuters neither true 



