INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS 



13 

 Be this as it may, the flower of most varieties of the Sage 

 presents an attractive solution of the great problem of cross- 

 fertilization. But, even as, among men, a new invention is 

 at once taken up, simplified, perfected by a host of small in- 

 defatigable seekers, so, in the world of what we may call me- 

 chanical flowers, the patent of the Sage has been elaborated 

 and in many details strangely improved. A well-known 

 Scrophularinea, the common Lousewort, or Red-rattle {Pedi- 

 cularis sylvatica), which you have surely noticed in the shady 

 parts of small woods and heaths, has introduced some ex- 

 tremely ingenious modifications. The shape of the corolla 

 is almost similar to that of the Sage; the stigma and the two 

 anthers are all three contained in the upper hood. Only the 

 little moist tip of the stigma protrudes from the hood, while 



state of perfection with the pollen of a very backward variety; and <vice versa. My 

 observations are not yet sufficiently numerous to enable me to give the details here. 

 Nevertheless, it appears as if a general law were already being evolved, namely that 

 the backward Sage readily adopts the improvements of the more advanced variety, 

 whereas the latter is not so prone to accept the defects of the first. This would tend 

 to throw an interesting side-light upon the operations, the habits, the preferences, the 

 tastes of nature at her best. But these are experiments which must of necessity be 

 slow and long, because of the time lost in collecting the different varieties, because of 

 the numberless proofs and counter-proofs required and so on. It would be premature, 

 therefore, as yet to draw the slightest conclusion. 



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