460 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



wet by holding an umbrella over them, and by making that umbrella out 

 of the material of the style, seems to have been first achieved in Moraa 

 and Dietes, and afterwards carried to great perfection in the North 

 African and South European Bulbous Irises, where it forms the most 

 attractive part of the flower, almost covers in the anther and its pollen, 

 and provides a right of way for the right kind of insect, to the exclusion 

 of others. This brings us up to the zone of Iris proper, which reaches 

 its best development, naturally, around the Mediterranean basin, Central 

 and Eastern Europe, and Western Asia. The true Iris is a variable- 



Fkj. 140.— Iris xiphioides, or English Iris. 



climate plant, and has almost as its first principle of construction the 

 protection of its pollen, first from rain, and then incidentally from all 

 manner of insects which would be useless in pollen-carrying ; and, as its 

 very existence is dependent upon insects, first the encouragement of the 

 right insect and then by special means to assure that this expected good 

 should be done. This being satisfactorily settled in the main, the sepal, 

 an advertisement, flag signal, or call to the insect, could be arranged as a 

 sort of detail (dependent probably on the amount of this useful insect 

 population in that district), and is, as we notice, small for South Spain, 

 North Africa, Palestine ; larger for North Spain, South France, Southern 



