PRIMROSE TIME. 5 



ceives its guest from below, or from one side, and so has 

 its blossom more bell-shaped as well as less widely ex- 

 panded. The primrose is pale to suit its own special 

 insect visitors ; the cowslip is a deeper yellow, melting 

 almost into orange, to meet the tastes of a somewhat 

 different and perhaps more daintily aesthetic circle. At 

 bottom, however, both flowers are very nearly the same, 

 and their peculiarities are all specially intended to in- 

 sure a very high type of cross-fertilisation. 



Observe that in both flowers the corolla, though 

 deeply divided into five notched lobes or sections, is yet 

 not really composed of separate petals, but tapers beneath 

 into a very long and narrow tube. Cowslips and prim- 

 roses belong by origin to the great division of five-petalled 

 flowers ; for all blossoms originally had their parts 

 arranged either in sets of threes or in sets of fives ; and 

 this distinction, though often obscured, is still the most 

 fundamental one between all flowering species. But in 

 the primrose, as in many other advanced types, the five 

 primitive petals have coalesced at their bases into a 

 single tube, so as to make the honey accessible only to 

 bees, butterflies, and other insects with a long proboscis, 

 who could benefit the plant by duly effecting the transfer 

 of pollen from the stamens of one flower to the sensitive 

 surface of another. In blossoms with open petals many 

 thieving little creatures come in sideways and steal the 

 honey without going near the pollen at all : in a better 

 adapted flower like the primrose such a mischance is 

 rendered impossible. 



Notice, too, that in both varieties the eye or centre of 

 the corolla is deep orange, while the outside is lighter in 

 tone. This difference in colour acts as a honey-guide, 



