110 THE STORY OF THE PLANTS. 



spot previously occupied by the stamens. You 

 can try this experiment very easily for yourself 

 by putting a straw or bent of grass down the 

 tube of a garden salvia, when the stamens will 

 at once bend down and embrace it in the way I 

 have mentioned. 



You must not suppose, however, that all 

 flowers are fertilised by bees and butterflies. 

 Many plants lay themselves out for quite dif- 

 ferent visitors. Take for example our common 

 English figwort. This is a curious, lurid-looking, 

 reddish-brown blossom, shaped somewhat like a 

 helmet, and it is fertilised almostexplusively by 

 wasps. Its shape and size exactlyaSapt it for 

 aTwasp's head ; and it blooms at the time of 

 year when wasps are numerous. Now wasps, 

 as you know, are carnivorous and omnivorous 

 creatures ; so the figwort, to attract them, looks 

 as meaty as it can, and has an odour not unlike 

 that of decaying mutton. Certain tropical flowers 

 again attract carrion-flies, and these have big 

 blossoms that look like decomposing meat, and 

 smell disgustingly. A South African flower of 

 this sort, the Stapelia, is sometimes cultivated 

 as a curiosity in greenhouses. I have already 

 remarked on the white flowers which open at 

 night, and attract tEe^moths of twilight ; while 

 others again lay themselves out to be fertilised 

 by midges, beetles, and other insect riff-raff. 

 Most of these have the honey displayed on wide 

 open discs, where it can be sipped by insects 

 with hardly any proboscis. 



In our latitudes it is only insects that so act 



