184 COLIN CLOUT'-S CALENDAR. 



three or six green scales of the female bur-reed. Each 

 ovary is now so extremely small that you cannot dis- 

 tinguish them separately at all with the naked eye : if 

 you cut the spike across, the only thing you can see is 

 a thick mass of soft brownish hairs, black at the tips 

 and paler inside towards the central stalk. 



How many hundreds of thousands of flowers are 

 thus cribbed and cabined on a single stem nobody has 

 ever had the patience to count ; a mere pinch pulled out 

 between the finger and thumb displays under the micro- 

 scope an apparently infinite number of distinct florets, 

 each with a single tiny ovary and a fluffy envelope of small 

 hairs. Yet all this degradation, as we rightly account it, 

 is strictly in adaptation to the peculiar habits of the 

 reed-mace. It grows by the edge of shallow waters 

 only ; and since these are very liable to dry up or shift 

 their place from time to time, it requires great numbers 

 of easily dispersed seeds, so as to take advantage of every 

 new habitat which petty topographical changes may put 

 at its disposal. Hence wind-fertilisation and winged 

 fruits exactly suit its special needs ; and in adaptation 

 to those needs it has become, perhaps, the most degraded 

 type of flowering plant now in existence, save only the 

 little floating stalkless duck-weed which forms a green 

 film on the surface of the half-stagnant water at its base. 



