INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS 



and marvellous combination and precision of all its move- 

 ments. 



The varieties of the Sage are very many — they number 

 about five hundred — and I will spare you the greater part of 

 their scientific names, which are not always pretty: Salvia 

 pratensis, officinalis (our Garden Sage), Horminum, Hormi- 

 noides, glutinosa, Sclarea, Roemeri, azurea, Pitcheri, splen- 

 dens (the magnificent Sage of our flower-beds) and so on. 

 There is not, perhaps, one but has modified some detail of the 

 machinery which we have just examined A few — and this, 

 I think, is a doubtful improvement — have doubled and some- 

 times trebled the length of the pistil, so that it not only emerges 

 from the hood, but makes a wide plumelike curve in front of 

 the entrance to the flower. They thus avoid the just-possible 

 danger of the fertilization of the stigma by the anthers dwell- 

 ing in the same hood ; but on the other hand, it may happen, 

 if the protenandry be not strict, that the insect, on leaving the 

 flower, deposits on the stigma the pollen of the very anthers 

 with which the stigma cohabits. Others, in the movement of 

 the lever, make the anthers diverge farther apart, so as to 

 strike the sides of the animal with greater precision. Others, 

 lastly, have not succeeded in arranging and adjusting every 



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