MORE MARRIAGE CUSTOMS. 105 



CHAPTER VIII. 



MORE MARRIAGE CUSTOMS. 



Almost all the flowering plants with which 

 most people are familiar — all, indeed, save the 

 pines and other conifers — belong to one or other 

 of two great groups or alliances, each remotely 

 descended from a common ancestor. The flow- 

 ers we have hitherto been considering are entirely 

 those which belong to one of these two groups — 

 the group which started with rows of five, having 

 five sepals, five petals, five or ten stamens, and 

 five or ten carpels. In several cases, certain of 

 these rows have been simplified or reduced in 

 number ; but almost always we can see to the 

 end some trace of the original fivefold arrange- 

 ment. This fivefold arrangement is very con- 

 spicuous in all the stonecrops, and it may also be 

 well noticed in wild geraniums, and less well in 

 the strawberry, the dog-rose, and the cinquefoil. 



In the present chapter, how^ever, I propose to 

 go on to sundry flowers of the other great group 

 which has its parts in rows of three, and to show 

 how they have beeg affected by insect visits. 

 This will give us a clearer view of the whole 

 subject, while it will also form a general intro- 

 duction to systematic botany for those of my 

 readers who may be induced by this book to 

 carry their studies in this direction further. 



Before proceeding, however, there is one little 

 point I should like to note about the fivefold 

 flowers, which we shall find much more common 

 in the threefold, and among the wind-fertilised 

 species. This is the separation of the sexes in 



