EARLY SEEDTIME. 85 



rank or station. So we see the tastes of their different 

 clients reflected in their own colours. The daisy has 

 evolved white rays with pink tips to satisfy the eyes of 

 a more aesthetically exacting circle ; the dandelion 

 retains the primitive yellow corolla of its kind, the hue 

 that best suits the requirements of miscellaneous small 

 flies and petty honey-seeking beetles. Each in its own 

 way has proved very successful ; for do not daisies and 

 dandelions grow everywhere ? But on the whole, as 

 usually happens, the higher type is the most successful 

 of the two. Both largely owe their advancement in life 

 to their serried rows of flowers, which allow the bee or 

 butterfly to pass from one floret to another with ease, 

 and to fertilise many blossoms at once for a very small 

 return in the way of honey. 



All this, however, has very little to do with the 

 dandelion clock, though it is necessary by way of 

 preliminary to the consideration of those fluffy balls. 

 The clock consists of the rest of the florets after the 

 corolla has fallen off. The lower part, of course, is the 

 seed, or rather the fruit : but what is the upper part, the 

 little parachute of white silky hairs ? Well, this curious 

 appendage represents one of the most singular and 

 instructive transformations in all nature. Pull out one 

 of the blossoming florets from the yellow dandelion-head, 

 and you will see it is surrounded by a circular group of 

 small hairs. These hairs are all that remains of the 

 original calyx, which had for its function the protection 

 of the flower from intrusive insects. But when the 

 dwarfed and clustered blossoms of the original ancestor 

 from whom both daisy and dandelion are descended 

 grew into a single compact head, the use of the separate 



