THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 467 



Since it blossoms in our country, it might fructify if kept 

 duly supplied with heat by means of a hot-air apparatus, 

 and yet it remains quite barren. The same thing happens 

 with the orange-colored corollas of the Royal Strelitzia. 1 



It is especially in the two great families, the Asclepia- 

 dacese and Orchidacese, the strange flowers of which remind 

 one of the forms and brilliant coloring of insects, that Na- 

 ture seems to call the latter to her aid. In these the anthers, 

 which are like little glutinous clubs, attach themselves to 

 the flies when these come to drink the nectar, and are by 

 them transported from one flower to another and deposited 

 upon the stigmata. But for such visitors these plants would 

 die out without progeny. 2 



With respect to other plants, Nature has intrusted the 

 cares of their conjugal union to the wings of the wind. This 

 is the case with the dioecious plants, the sexes in which are 

 separate and dwell on distinct plants, which are often sepa- 



1 The Rev. Conrad Sprengel, who assigned such a marvellous part in the 

 fecundation of plants to insects, in the excess of his enthusiasm called them 

 Nature's gardeners. The proof that the sterility of the Aromatic Vanilla (Fa- 

 nilla aromatica, Linn.) in our greenhouses is owing to the imperfect nature of the 

 fecundation has been given by the experiments of M. Morren, who showed that 

 by placing the pollen itself upon the stigmata of the flowers fecundation was ar- 

 tificially produced, and that plants were thus soon obtained which for beauty and 

 aroma might rival those produced by America. On the other hand, M. Brong- 

 niart artificially fecundated the Strelitzia regina, which, left to itself, is with us 

 unproductive. 



2 Sometimes bees, when rifling the flowers of the Asclepiadaceae or Orchises, 

 come out with their heads and feet covered with the anthers of these flowers, like 

 small clubs. In some cases so much adheres that they cannot fly. This is the 

 affection which amateurs call the "club disorder." Ch. Robin, in the beautiful 

 plates of his work on vegetable parasites, gives figures of different insects strug- 

 gling with this inconvenient burden. 



