THE COLOURS OF FLOWERS. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE ORIGIN OF PETALS. 



Everybody knows that flowers are rendered beautiful 

 to us by their shapes, by their perfumes, and above 

 all by their brilliant and varied colours. All people 

 who have paid any attention to botany further know 

 that not every flower is thus bright and conspicuous ; 

 as a general rule, only those blossoms which depend 

 for their fertilisation upon the visits of insects are 

 provided with special attractions of honey, scent, and 

 vivid hues. An immense number of flowering plants, 

 perhaps even the majority among them, produce 

 only small and unnoticeablc inflorescences, like those 

 of grasses, oaks, conifers, and many other field weeds 

 or forest trees. The flowers that most people observe 

 and recognise as such, are the few highly developed 

 forms which possess large expanded coloured surfaces 

 to allure the eyes of their insect fertilisers. It is with 

 flowers in this more popular and ordinary sense that 

 we shall have to deal mainly in the present little 

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