NOTES ON FLORAL MORPHOLOGY. 49 
this relation the economy of labour to the bee or other 
nectar-loving insect: for, inflorescences, like those of the 
Composit, enable an insect to gather all the honey it 
needs and at the same time fertilize a large number cf 
flowers with a minimum expenditure of energy, whilst 
there must be far more labour involved in gathering honey 
and fertilizing the florets of the laburnum inflorescence, and 
much more chance of the bee missing a number. Possibly 
this economy to the insect may have been a factor of some 
importance in determining that the Composite should be 
the largest and most wide spread natural order on the 
earth’s surface. That all the florets should retain their 
long corolla (in this case gamopetalous) would be an 
instance of waste of material which nature is seldom guilty 
of; consequently we find in many Composite the outer 
florets (of the ray) alone retain their long corolle, whilst 
the central florets (of the disc) have lost them. The outer 
long ligulate corolle are sufficient to protect the inner 
florets from injury from wind. The action of the wind 
may be very well studied on the common marigold, and 
what has been said of the polypetalous flower may be 
applied also to the Composite head, which is so often 
popularly mistaken for a single flower. 
3. The Gamopetale have been justly considered as a 
higher type than the Polypetalew, and these considerations 
may help to show us why it is so. For if it be good for 
the flower to have its anthers protected from rude blasts 
which may blow off all the ripe pollen, of course it must 
be necessarily a greater protection to have a permanent 
tube surrounding the essential organs than a temporary 
one which, moreover, is slit up the sides in several places. 
We have an approach to the gamopetalous condition 
in many Polypetale where the calyx is more or less 
gamosepalous, and helps to keep the petal limbs in 
4 
