294 EVENING FLOWERS. 



cany the pollen from one blossom to another, and 

 so in the end to secure tlie continuance of their 

 own food-plants to future summers. Tropical 

 flowers of this class have usually very deep funnel- 

 shaped bells, and many of them may be seen as 

 familiar decorations of our greenhouses and con- 

 servatories. Blossoms with such long tubes 

 would be useless and impossible in a wild state 

 in northern climates; we have no birds fitted to 

 visit them, and no insects with a proboscis long 

 enough to reach their store of honey, so that in 

 our own woodlands they would necessarily die 

 out at the end of a single life, for want of means 

 to set their seeds, and so continue their existence 

 in the persons of their seedling descendants. 



The whole world of nature is everywhere full of 

 these marvellous inter-relations, which modern 

 science is only just beginning to unravel in all 

 their complexity. As we see at once from this 

 single example, the merest spots and lines and 

 hues and scents of flowers are never without their 

 sufficient purpose ; and if we cannot, at a first 

 glance, find out their meanings, we can almost 

 always begin to spell tliem out, at least, by dint 

 of longer and more patient study. The hairs on 

 the moth's proboscis are themselves there with 

 the deliberate object of collecting the fertilizing 

 powder from the flowers it visits; and, if they 

 were not there, the plants upon which the moth 



