WHITE AND GREENISH FLOWERS 



" The tratisition from wind-fe7-tilizatio7i to insect-fertilization and 

 the first traces of adaptation to insects, could only be due to the influence 

 of quite short-lipped insects with feebly developed color sense. The most 

 primitive flowers are therefore for the most part simple, widely open, reg- 

 ular, devoid of nectar or with their tiectar unconcealed and easily accessible, 

 and greetiish, 7vhite, or yellow in color. . . . Lcpidoptera, by the 

 thinness, sometimes by the length, of their tongues, were able to produce 

 special modifications. Through their agency were developed flowe?-s with 

 long and narrow tubes, whose colors and time of openitig were in relation 

 to the tastes and habits of their visitors.'" — HERMANN MuLLER. 



" Of all colors, white is the prevailing one ; and of white flowers a 

 considerably larger proportion smell sweetly than of any other color, 

 namely, 1^.6 per cent. ; of red only 8.2 per cent, are odoriferous. The 

 fact of a large proportion of white flowers smelling sweetly ?nay depend in 

 part on those 7vhich are fertilized by moths 7-equiring the double aid of con- 

 spicuousness in the dusk and of odor. So great is the economy of Nature, 

 that fnost flowers which are fertilized by crepuscular or nocturnal insects 

 emit their odor chiefly or exclusively in the evening. " — ChaRLES DaRWIN. 



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