178 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



hand, the insects repay the flower for its honey by 

 carrying pollen from blossom to blossom, and so 

 enabling the plant to set its seed. Of course, unless 

 the young capsule in the centre of each blossom is 

 thus fertilised by pollen from one of its neighbours, 

 it never ripens into a seed-bearing fruit at all ; and, 

 indeed, in the economy of the plant itself, the sole 

 object of the blossom, with its bright petals, its store 

 of honey, and its faint perfume (almost imperceptible 

 to any save very delicate senses), is simply to induce 

 the bee or the butterfly thus to convey the fertilising 

 powder from one head of flowers to another of the 

 same sort. 



Our little plant has of course a botanical name of 

 the usual clumsy kind ; but in this particular instance 

 there is a certain rough fitness in its application, for 

 being a Welsh lily by nature it is duly known by a 

 Latinised Welsh name as Lloydia. Now, I am not 

 going this morning to inquire fully into the whole 

 past history of the original family from which it 

 springs — that would be too long a subject for an off- 

 hand lecture as I sit here basking on the bare granite 

 slope ; I propose only entering in any detail into the 

 last chapter of its chequered career, and asking how 

 it has managed to keep its foothold for so many ages 

 in this one spot and on a few neighbouring Snow- 



