NATURE NOTES 
\o5 
It is obvious that a plant flowering as early as does the 
primrose, when but few insects are flying, and especially when 
it is only adapted to the visits of a few of these, must necessarily 
often escape cross-fertilisation. It becomes, therefore, important 
that provision should be made for self-pollination, in case cross- 
pollination should not be effected. Hence, as I stated in the 
end of my remarks last year also, tlie primrose, while adapted to 
the visits of insects, is also provided with efficient means of self- 
pollination. Mr. Bell was certainly right in drawing attention 
to the shaking of the flowers by the wind, and besides this, we 
have the gradual downward movement of the flowers from the 
erect to the almost pendant condition, which gives both the 
short-styled and also the long-styled forms the opportunity of 
having the pollen shaken on to the stigmas. In some localities, 
too, the flowers of very many primroses are inhabited by that 
little insect, Thrips, and also by a small beetle [Euphalerum 
primula), both of which, by creeping about within the flowers, 
become completely dusted over with pollen, and must be power- 
ful agents in the self-pollination, more particularly of the 
short-styled forms. It is trufe that they may occasionally effect 
cross- pollination, but from their mode of life within the flower 
must be more often the cause of self-pollination. 
It is a pity, as the Editor said last month, that some persons 
should make such sweeping generalisations as that “ Nature 
abhors self-fertilisation,” when so many plants are provided with 
methods of self-pollination in the absence of the probably more 
efficient and therefore desirable cross-pollination. But it seems, 
too, equally extreme to assume that, because the primroses are 
fertile with their own pollen and often self-pollinated, the 
heterostyled flowers have no functional significance. If, as I 
believe we have evidence, the flowers of the primrose are visited 
by insects, the importance of dimorphic flowers as ensuring 
cross-pollination is obvious, and a detailed examination of the 
structure of the stigma and the pollen-grain, as well as Darwin’s 
experiments, strongly support this view. 
MAY-TIDE FESTIVAL AT 
LAKES. 
THE ENGLISH 
AY-TIDE comes to no part of the British Isles more 
! gloriously than to our English Lakeland. There is 
such swift moving into change upon the fells, that they 
seem to be veritably alive from the dead. The heather 
patches, last week dark as jet, are this week seen to take on a 
delicate lilac hue. Indeed, so red are the heather buds that 
from a distance at sunset time one could believe that August 
with its heather bloom was here. The rich umber of the 
bracken on the mountain breast melts day by day into the 
