SLEEPING FLOWERS. 



305 



and ^ the rays female, as in the marigold ; or even 

 dioecious, one plant bearing male heads, and another 

 female, as in the cudweed {Gnaphalium dioicum). 



But all are wonderful ; the commonest of composites, 

 the field daisy, peeping out amidst the grass though 

 it forms but little dots in the pattern of Nature's soft 

 carpet, is still a world of wonders in every one of the 

 hundred tiny tubes that make up its little face, with 

 its frill of white and pink. It carries within itself 

 the counterpart of all hitherto explained, with marvel 

 upon marvel beside, to reward him who seeks ; for 

 Nature is never truly wooed that she does not lift 

 her veil and smile. The daisy, too, is a sleeper ; 

 when the sun goes down, she closes her ray-florets, 

 to open them again when day returns ; and hence 

 her name — " day's eye." So with other flowers — 

 the dandelion, the hawkweed, the sandwort, the pim- 

 pernel, all of which choose special hours to sleep 

 and wake, adding a day nap when clouds hide 

 the sun. Some blossoms are like Convolvulus septum 

 (the great bindweed), which closes at night, unless 

 the moon is shining, and the stillness is broken by 

 the low murmur of the moth's wing, when it remains 

 open. If to this we add, that wind-fertilised blossoms 

 do not sleep, and that those depending on moths are 

 especially fragrant during the most active hours of 

 these nocturnal insects, is not the conclusion almost 

 irresistible, that these peculiarities have relation to the 

 modes of fertilisation of each ? 



No order contains a larger proportion of plants of 

 utility to bees than the Leguminosse, every British 

 representative of which has an irregular flower, of 



2 B 



