SCARLET GERANIUMS. 157 



iscd race, produced under peculiar circumstances in a 

 limited tract of country. We know that the competition 

 between flowers for the visits of fertilising insects is par- 

 ticularly fierce in South Africa : because from no other 

 district do we get so large a number of our most con- 

 spicuous garden blossoms ; and wherever such strong 

 competition exists, as among the higher Alps and in the 

 Arctic regions, where bees are almost unknown, and 

 butterflies are rare, only the most brilliant and attractive 

 flowers of all succeed in getting fertilised. Under these 

 circumstances, the native geraniums of South Africa 

 have been compelled to specialise themselves into the 

 highly peculiar pelargonium form : or, to put it more 

 correctly, only those which did so have ultimately 

 survived. 



Instead of having five honey-glands on an open disk, 

 which any small insects could easily thieve, the pelargo- 

 niums have secreted all their honey in one depression, 

 which has grown longer and longer till at length it has 

 assumed the shape of a deep pouch. This, on the one 

 hand, has made it accessible only to insects with a very 

 long proboscis ; while, on the other hand, it has simul- 

 taneously enabled the flower to make more sure of 

 proper fertilisation, and so to dispense with half its 

 original complement of stamens. The sensitive surface 

 of the pistil now turns down to meet the pollen on the 

 insect's head, as it poises on level wings before the deep 

 nectary ; and this surface itself consists of five spreading 

 fingers, covered (under a slight magnifying power) with 

 beautiful crystalline glands to which the pollen readily 

 adheres. The irregularity in the petals follows as a guide 

 to the insect ; the upper pair being slightly raised on 



