54 ALPINE FLOWERS AND ROCK GARDENS. 



amongst Alpine flowers. If their life is short, it is also 

 gay ; the blues, pinks and yellows of their summer 

 dress, are of the most brilliant hues. The diversity of 

 colour gives the flowers more of an individuality than 

 does the blaze of a single colour, as in the case of the 

 buttercups of our meadows, the poppies of our corn- 

 fields, and the purple heather of our moors. And it is 

 suggested that the flowers benefit, as the contrasting 

 colours more readily attract the insect visitors, whose 

 assistance in the work of cross fertilization is so much 

 desired. There are, indeed, instances where the normal 

 colour of a species is changed for another colour when 

 the change brings about a contrast to the prevalent 

 shades of the plant^s neighbours. " To blush unseen,'* 

 in spite of Gray's lament, is the exception from the 

 standpoint of the flower itself ; it seeks to flaunt itself 

 not from vanity, but for the perpetuation of its race. 

 Hence the devices to invite the insects to seek its 

 flowers, and the many details of form and structure — 

 like the streaks of the pansies, and the lines on some of 

 the gentians, to guide the winged visitor ; and those 

 other contrivances, calculated to ward off the marauding 

 raids of undesirable guests. 



Important as cross fertilization is to flowers, it is not 

 essential. If it were so some of the plants would fare 

 indifferently. Their summer is short, it is broken up 

 by storms, days of rain or of drizzle and mist — days 

 which hinder the insects from wandering abroad . Hence 

 in many of the mountain plants, the essential organs for 

 fertihzation are so arranged that should cross fertiliza- 

 tion fail, autogamy, or self-fertihzation, takes place. 



