Dandelions 45 
the great composite family. It serves as a public 
calyx, filling for the floral codperative society many 
duties which are filled by the calyces of solitary 
blossoms. 
It shelters the florets in their infancy, it helps 
to guard their nectar from crawling thieves, and, 
in many species, it screens their pollen from the 
rain, and encloses and cradles them at night. The 
calyces thus ‘‘ thrown out of their jobs,’’ are placed 
in a position somewhat akin to that of a com- 
munity of work-people, whose many individual tasks 
have been taken up and synthetized by some 
piece of labor-saving machinery. 
They must learn some new way of making them- 
selves useful, or they will perish—following a gen- 
eral law of all disused organs. 
So throughout the great family of composite 
flowers we find the calyx of the floret so modi- 
fied as to help in the great work of plant dis- 
tribution (Fig. 5). In the bur-marigold it is con- 
verted into barbed prongs, which fasten onto the 
passer-by, and force him to aid the plans of the 
parent plant for placing its offspring in life. In 
the dandelion and in some of its cousins the calyx 
is so modified that by means of it the wind is 
forced to act as a sower. Below each dandelion 
