WHY PERFECT FLOWERS NEED TO ATTRACT INSECTS. 
21 
and are visited by bees. Is their nectar provided only for the good of the beel 
We might suppose so, until we come to know the remarkable fact that, unless 
visited by insects, they seldom ripen a pod or set a seed. The Showy Dicentra, 
which comes from Japan or Northern China, rarely sets fruit in our gardens in 
any case. But the wild species of Corydalis and Fumitory, which have their 
flowers on the same plan, seed freely enough. Yet when the blossoms are kept 
covered with fine gauze, so as to exclude insects, little or no seed is produced. 
Evidently then, for some reason or other, insects sucking their honey are not only 
* useful, but needful even to such blossoms. Why they should be needful remains 
to be seen. 
Fig. 9. Flower of Bleeding-heart, Dicentra spectabilis Fig. 10 Same, with the tips of the united inner petals pushed 
to one side. Fig. 11. Tips of the six stamens and pistil, which are exposed in Fig. 10, here separated and dis- 
played, magnified. 
38. If it be wonderful that such flowers as the last do not well fertilize without 
help, although constructed, as we should say, expressly to do it, equally wonderful 
is it to find blossoms with anthers and stigma placed close together, but with some 
obstacle interposed, as shown on near examination; which looks as if the object 
were how not to do it. 
39. Iris-flowers are of this sort. There is a stamen to each of the three stig- 
mas, and close beside it. Behind each stamen and partly overhanging it is a 
petal-like body, peculiar to Iris or Flower-de-Luce : these three bodies, appearing 
like supernumerary petals, are divisions of the style, in a peculiar form, notched 
at the end; under the notch is the stigma, in the form of a thin plate. We 
notice that the stigma is higher than the anther ; but that is only a part of the 
