# 



^,..VV| 



r^!.^ 



CoMPOSiT.E Manners and How they 

 Charm the Insects 



t 



If the dainty mechanism shown in 

 . ^ the barberry, pulse, primrose, and 

 madder famiHes excites our wonder, 

 what shall be said of the revelations 

 in the great order of the Compositae, 

 where each so-called flower, as in the dan- 

 delion, daisy, cone-flower, marigold, thistle, 

 golden-rod, aster, and innumerable other 

 species, is really a dense cluster of minute 

 flowers, each as perfect in its construction 

 as in the examples already mentioned, each 

 with its own peculiar plan designed to insure the 

 transfer of its own pollen to the stigma of its 

 neighbor, while excluding it from its own ? 



All summer long the cone-flower, or brown-eyed 

 Susan, Ritdbcckia hirta^ shown in the chapter 

 heading, blooms in our fields ; but how few of 

 us imagine the strange processes which are being 

 enacted in that purple cone ! Let us examine it 



67 



