12 THE STORY OF THE I»IiANTS. 



by giving him in return a drop of honey. The 

 bee or butterfly goes there, of course, for the 

 honey alone, unconscious that he is aiding the 

 plant to set its seeds; but the plant puts the 

 honey there in order to entice him against his 

 will to transport the fertilising powder from 

 flower to flower. There is no more fascinating 

 chapter in the great book of life than that which 

 deals with these marriage relations of the flowers 

 and insects, and I shall explain at some detail in 

 later portions of this little work some of the most 

 curious and interesting of such devices. 



Again, after the plant has had its flower 

 fertilised, and has set its seed, it has to place 

 its young ones out in the world to the greatest 

 advantage. If it merely drops them under its 

 own branches, they may not thrive at all; it 

 may have impoverished the soil already of certain 

 things which are necessary for that particular 

 kind, owing to causes to be explained hereafter ; 

 and even where this is not the case, the sur- 

 rounding soil may be so fully occupied by other 

 plants that the poor little seedlings get no 

 chance of establishing themselves. To meet 

 such emergencies, plants have invented all sorts 

 of clever dodges for dispersing their seeds, into 

 the nature of which we wdll go in full in the 

 sequel. Thus, some of them put feathery tops 

 to their seeds or fruits, like the thistle and the 

 dandelion, the willow and the cotton-bush, by 

 means of which they float lightly on the air, and 

 are wafted by the wind to new and favourable 

 situations. Others, again, bribe animals to dis- 

 perse them, by the allurement of sweet and pulpy 



