Flowers and Insects. 83 



and there can be no fertilization of one by the 

 other, or else one has already passed its period of 

 fertility and is no longer active. 



Again, stamens and pistil are sometimes so 

 related to each other that the pollen cannot reach 

 the stigma unaided. 



Oftentimes, too, the pollen is inoperative in its 

 own flower, even acting as a blight. 



Sometimes the pistil curves away from the sta- 

 mens, sometimes, it shuts itself up in a little box of 

 petals and refuses to look forth and receive the gift 

 of pollen from its own stamens. 



What madness is this on the part of the 

 flowers? 



The pollen cannot, as a rule, like the sperm-cells 

 of the fish, float about until it find its companion- 

 life. Although ready enough to grow down into 

 the ovary when once it finds lodgment upon the 

 stigma, the pollen has no wings to bear it from 

 flower to flower, no legs to enable it to search for 

 its companion-life — then what does this refusal on 

 the part of the flowers mean? 



Ah, but the pollen has wings, and there is in the 

 flower a confidence born of long ancestral experi- 

 ence that these wings will appear in time and bear 

 its pollen to waiting ovules, as well as bring to it 

 fresh pollen from neighboring plants. The wings 

 are those of the insects. Long ages of this sort of 

 interchange have formed flowers dependent upon 

 insects for fertilization. The bee enters a blossom 



