292 EVENING FLOWERS. 



pion-blossom with ten little mealy pollen-bags 

 lianging out temptingly at tlie end of their long 

 stalks or filaments. As he thrusts his proboscis 

 deep into the recesses of the fragrant flower in 

 search of the honey, he dusts over the top part 

 about his mouth with the floury pollen-grains 

 which form that sticky yellow powder that every 

 one must have noticed in the centre of most gar- 

 den-blossoms. As long as he goes on visiting 

 similar white campions provided with the same 

 sort of pollen-bags, he only continues to collect 

 more of the soft yellow powder upon the base of 

 his proboscis. But by and by he happens to 

 arrive at a rather different flower of the same 

 kind, which is alike in every other respect to 

 those he has already visited, but posseses in its 

 middle an unripe seed-capsule, instead of pollen- 

 bags, filled within by tiny formless embryo seeds. 

 These embryos require the fertilizing influence of 

 tlie pollen in order to make them grow out into 

 perfect seeds; and the moth, in passing from one 

 plant to another in search of honey, unwittingly 

 conveys the precious powder from the first kind of 

 blossom to the budding seedlets of the other. 

 Thus, while the plant provides honey for the sus- 

 tenance of the moth, the moth on his part — to 

 adopt a transparent metaphor — repays the plant 

 by acting as a common carrier of pollen from one 

 flower to its nearest neighbors. 



