THE AYEI.COAtES OF THE FLOWERS 



141 



foregoing, which are more or less automatic in 

 their movements, is the truly astonishing and 

 seemingly conscious mechanism displayed in the 

 wild arum of Great Britain — the "lords and la- 

 dies " of the \illage lanes, the foreign counterpart 

 of our well-known jack-in-the-pulpit, or Indian-tur- 

 nip, with its purple -streaked canopy, and sleek 

 " preacher " standing erect beneath it. A repre- 

 sentation of this arum is shown 

 in Fig. 12, and a cross section 

 at A, properly indexed. 



How confidently would the 

 superficial — nay, even careful — 

 examination of one of the old- 

 time botanists have interpreted 

 its structure : " How simple and 

 perfect the structure ! Observe 

 how the anthers are placed so 

 that pollen shall naturally fall directly on the 

 stigmas and fertilize them !" Such would indeed 

 appear to be intended, until it is actually dis- 

 covered that the stigmas have ivithered when the 

 pollen is shed — a device which, acting in asso- 

 ciation with the little ring of hairs, tells a strange 

 story. It is not my fortune to have seen one 

 of these singular blossoms, but from the descrip- 

 tion of the process of fertilization given in Her- 



Fig. i; 



