261 
THE FERTILISATION OF SALVIA AND OF SOIHE 
OTHER FLOWERS. 
BY WILLIAM OGLE, M.D. 
Lectttree on Physiology at St. Geokge’s Hospital. 
[PLATES XLVIII. AND XLIX.] 
M r. DARWIN has, in many places, and notably in his book 
on orchids, insisted on the dictum, ‘‘ Nature abhors perpe- 
tual self-fertilisation.” Even in hermaphrodite organisms there 
exists, he believes, invariably some contrivance which either 
entirely prevents self-fertilisation, or at any rate ensures a more 
or less frequent intercross. In this paper I wish to add some 
more facts to the many which Mr. Darwin has adduced in sup- 
port of this proposition. I think I shall be able to show, that 
in many species of salvia, and in some other plants, there are 
certain most ingenious contrivances, which hinder or impede 
self-fertilisation and ensure intercrosses between separate flowers. 
The salvia in which I first noted the phenomena which I am 
going to describe, is a tall handsome plant, which I take to be 
a cultivated variety of S. officinalis, A single flower of the na- 
tural size is pictured in fig. 1. The corolla is two or three times 
as long as the calyx, with a widely open mouth and dilated 
tube, which admits of the entrance of humble bees. These 
seem to be especially attracted by this flower, and on my visits 
to a piece of ground where the plant grew in profusion, I inva- 
riably found a large number of them buzzing about the blos- 
soms, settling on the tempting landing-place offered by the 
central lobe of the lower lip of the corolla, and diving into the 
recesses of the tube to enjoy the glandular secretion of the nec- 
tary at its base. There can, I imagine, he no doubt that the 
aromatic perfume of the whole plant and the glandular se- 
cretion of the fringe in the tube exist in order to promote the 
visits of bees to the flower. 
There are in this salvia, as in others, four stamens, of which, 
however, the two upper ones are rudimentaiy. The remaining 
two have a very peculiar structure. Each consists of a short 
