MORE MARRIAGE CUSTOMS. 133 



yet no reward for their trouble. By and by, 

 however, after all the female flowers have been 

 duly fertilised, the males above begin to ripen. 

 When the stamens reach maturity, they shower 

 down a whole flood of golden pollen on the 

 expectant midges. Then the midges positively 

 roll and revel in the flood, eating all they can, 

 but at the same time covering themselves all 

 over with a dust of pollen-grains. As soon as 

 the pollen is all shed, the downward-pointing 

 hairs wither away; the lobster-pot ceases to act; 

 and the midges are at liberty to fly away to 

 another plant, where they similarly begin to 

 fertilise the female flowers. Observe that, if 

 the stamens were the first to ripen here, the 

 pollen would fall on the stigmas of the same 

 plant, but that, by making the stigmas be the 

 first to mature, the cuckoo-pint secures for itself 

 the desired end of cross-fertilisation. 



In this case it is an interesting fact that all 

 the stages which led to the existing arrangement 

 of the flowers still remain visible in other plants 

 for us. These very reduced little blossoms of the 

 cuckoo-pint, consisting each of a single carpel or 

 a single stamen, are yet the descendants of per- 

 fect blossoms which had once a regular calyx 

 and corolla. Near relations of the cuckoo-pint 

 live in Europe and Africa to this day, which 

 recapitulate for us, as it were, the various stages 

 in its slow evolution. Some, the oldest in type, 

 have a calyx and corolla, green and inconspicu- 

 ous, with six stamens inside them, enclosing a 

 two or three-celled ovary. These are still essen- 

 tially lilies in structure. But they have the 



