132 THE STOEY OF THE PLANTS. 



use of these flowers in the cuckoo-pint as it 

 stands to-day, and then I will go back to con- 

 sider by what steps the plant came to develop 

 them. 



The upper flowers, which look like hairs, and 

 point all downwards, occupy a place in the 

 compound flower-head just opposite the con- 

 spicuous narrowed part of the spathe which 

 surrounds and encloses them. At this narrow 

 point they form a sort of lobster-pot. It is easy 

 enough for an insect to creep down past them, 

 but very difficult or impossible for him to creep 

 up in the opposite direction, as all the hairs 

 point sharply downward. Now, when the 

 spathe unfolds, large numbers of a very small 

 midge of a particular species are attracted into 

 it by the purple club which rises like a barber's 

 pole in the middle. If you cut a cuckoo-pint 

 open during its flowering period you v/ill always 

 find a whole mob of these wee flies, crawling 

 about in it vaguely, and covered from head to 

 foot with pollen. They have come from another 

 cuckoo-pint which they previously visited, and 

 they have brought the pollen with them on their 

 wings and. bodies. But when they first reach 

 the head, they find no pollen there ; the female 

 flowers at the bottom ripen first, and the midges, 

 creeping over the sensitive surface of these, fer- 

 tilise them with pollen from the last plant they 

 entered. Finding nothing to eat, if they could 

 they would crawl out again ; but they can't, for 

 the lobster-pot hairs prevent them. So they 

 stop on perforce, having unwittingly fertilised 

 the female flowers, but received themselves as 



