138 THE STORY OF THE PLANTS. 



smaller and smaller blossoms like the strawberry 

 and the potentilla, to green petalless types like 

 lady's-mantle and parsley-piert, or, last of all, to 

 wind-fertilised blossoms like those of the salad- 

 burnet. In the male flowers the very numerous 

 stamens hang out on long thread-like stalks 

 from the wee green cup, so that the wind may 

 readily catch and carry the pollen : in the 

 female blossoms the stigma is divided into 

 plume-like brushes, which readily entrap any 

 passing pollen-grain. Moreover, though both 

 kinds of flower grow on the same head, the 

 females are mostly at the top of the bunch, and 

 the males below them. This makes it difficult 

 for the pollen from the same head to fertilise the 

 females, as it would easily do if the males were 

 at the top. Nor is that all ; the female flowers 

 open first on each head, and hang out their 

 pretty feathery stigmas to the breeze that bends 

 the stem ; as soon as they have been fertilised 

 from a neighbour plant, the males in turn begin 

 to open, and shed their pollen for the use of 

 other flowers. In salad-burnet, however, the 

 division of the sexes into separate flowers has 

 not become a quite fixed habit ; for, though 

 most of the blossoms are either maleor female 

 only, as shown in the figure, we often find a cup 

 here and there which contains both stamens and 

 pistil together. 



I have already told you that in many plants 

 the calyx helps the corolla as an advertisement 

 for insects ; and sometimes, as in the marsh- 

 marigold and the various anemones, where there 

 are no petals at all, it becomes so brilliant as to 



