VAEIOUS MAKBIAGE CUSTOMS. 97 



of the buttercups. Our common English bulbous 

 buttercup is one of its best-known members. It 

 is yellow in colour, a point which is common to 

 most Dearly and simple flowers, because the 

 stamens are generally yellow, and when they 

 developed into petals they naturally retained at 

 first their original colouring. Only later and for 

 various special reasons did certain higher flowers 

 come by degrees to be white, pink, red, blue, 

 purple, or variegated. There is some reason to 

 believe, indeed, that the various other colours 

 were developed one after the other in the order ' 

 here named, and to the present day all the 

 simplest families of flowers remain chiefly 

 yelSw, as do the simpler and earlier members 

 of more advanced families. 



The common bulbous buttercup is thus pre- 

 vailingly yellow, because it is an early and 

 simple type of flow T er. It consists of four dis- 

 tinct and successive layers, or whorls of organs. 

 Outside all comes a calyx of five sepals, which 

 cover the flower in the bud, but are hardly 

 noticeable in the open blossom. They also 

 serve to keep off ants and other creeping in- 

 sects, for which purpose they are turned back 

 on the stem, and are covered with small hairs. 

 " But I thought the plant wanted to attract 

 insects," you will say. Yes, the right kind of 

 insects, the flying types, which go from one 

 flower to another of the same sort, and so pro- 

 mote due fertilisation. Flying insects, attracted 

 by colour and shape of petals, keep tojQAejDrajad- 

 of honey at a time ; they never mix their liquors. 

 But ants are drawn on by the smell of honey 

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