FEBRUARY. 
33 
fecundating 
dust cannot reach, the summit of the organ it is intended to fecundate. Some¬ 
times the pouches and the seed-bearing organ are not found in the same 
flower, as is the case in the Melon, which is the flower now under considera- 
tioni Sometimes, as in the Date, the Palm, and the Pistacia, the flowers con¬ 
taining the dust-pouches are on one tree, and those containing the seed-bearing 
organ are on another ; and these two trees are often removed far distant from 
each other. How, in these different circumstances, is the dust conveyed ? 
Will it be the wind that is charged with it ? and that dust, dispersed by it, 
will it go through space, as by a sort of attraction, to find the seed-bearing 
organ ? 
Towards the middle of last century, Bernard de Jussieu, demonstrator of 
botany in the Garden of Plants at Paris, on examining the trees that were 
placed under his inspection, observed that a Pistacia which till then had 
flowered every year without producing fruit, was about to yield well-formed 
fruit. The summit of the seed-bearing organ had certainly received the 
dust; but whence came this dust ? There had not been in all 
the Garden of Plants a single Pistacia tree whose 
flower was furnished with the dust-pouches ; a 
search was made in all the gardens of the neigh¬ 
bourhood, but not one was to be found. A fruit 
formed by seeds developed without the aid of the 
fertilising dust was a sudden check to the theory 
of the fecundation of flowers, which at that time 
was not so firmly established as it is in the present 
day. The great botanist, though disappointed at 
his unsuccessful search, perseveringly affirmed 
that there existed somewhere in the environs a 
Pistacia possessing dust-pouches, and that it was 
it which had caused the tree in the Garden of 
Plants to set its fruit; but still he failed to dis¬ 
cover it. Jussieu then applied to the authorities, 
who employed the police to search in a circle all 
round the gardens, and at last they discovered, 
near the Luxembourg, in a corner of the nursery 
of the Chartreux, a small Pistacia furnished with 
flowers containing the duct-pouches, and which 
had that year flowered for the first time. The dust had, then, travelled across 
the faubourgs St. Germain, St. Jacques, and St. Marceau before it reached the 
summit of the seed-bearing organ of the Pistacia in the Garden of Plants. 
To the wind, then, is due, in this instance, the work of fertilisation. Let us, 
however, consider another auxiliary to fecundation. 
You have no doubt often amused yourself by sucking the base of the 
flowers of Honeysuckle, Jasmine, Lilac, or Primrose, to extract the sweet 
liquor that is there found in abundance. This daintiness on your 
part is a robbery you have committed upon animals that have no 
other nutriment; these animals are butterflies, flies, humble bees, 
and other insects, often very small, which you can see squatting in 
the base of the flowers, where they find for the time an asylum and 
food. It is precisely to this nectar that we owe the honey collected 
by bees; it is distilled by organs which we shall refer to hereafter. 
The Wallflower, the Melon, and the greater part of plants have got 
it, and it is it which attracts the sucking insects. Do you think the 
flower furnishes this food and shelter gratis to these animals ? 
See that bee when it makes its gathering—it greedily sucks up the nectar, 
c 2 
Fig. 
Female flower 
Melon. 
tlie 
Fig. 6. 
Style and 
stigma of 
the M elon 
magnified. 
