44 VIGNETTES FROM NATURE. 



more specialised department of the pink 

 tribe. They and their ancestors have devoted 

 themselves to bees, butterflies, and other 

 developed flower-haunters, whose long pro- 

 boscis is peculiarly intended to aid them in 

 extracting the honey from deep tubular blos- 

 somr. Thus they have slowly acquired, by 

 long selection, a structure exactly adapted to 

 a surer and less wasteful mode of fertilisation 

 by means of ^hese higher insect allies. 



The outer covering of this campion here 

 does not consist of separate green sepals, like 

 those of the stichwort which I have picked 

 for comparison with it : its five pieces are 

 welded together into a swollen bell-shaped 

 tube — a campanular calyx, as the systematists 

 call it. Within the tube, five large pink 

 petals rise on long claws, kept together in 

 shape by the pressure of the calyx. Inside 

 the inner passage formed by the petals lie the 

 pollen-bearing stamens or the ovary wir.h its 

 embryo seeds, each in a separate flower, 

 whereof * more anon.' Thus the pollen and 



