BY THE PRESIDENT. 
7 
be protected by other means besides their possession of a disagreeable 
flavour. Parry states that during his fourth voyage his men col¬ 
lected the Cl. rangiferina as provender for his reindeer, and adds 
that it required “a great deal of picking ’ 1 to separate it from the 
moss among which it usually grows. Moss is not eaten by 
grazing animals, and it may therefore preserve the lichen with 
which it is closely interwoven. 
It is not, however, in the leaves but in the flowers of plants that 
we find the greatest number of instances of protective flavouring, 
as in 1790 was suggested by Erasmus Darwin as follows:—“The 
flowers or petals of plants are perhaps in general more acrid than 
their leaves, hence they are much seldomer eaten by insects.” * 
It is the flower which is the hope of the species, and we find every 
means used for its preservation. The methods may vary, but their 
object is unmistakable. Herbivorous animals have an abundance 
of food in the leaves of plants without their requiring the flowers, 
in the preservation of which they are also interested. They will 
eat with relish the leaves of many plants, but will resent the offer 
of their flowers, excepting those of grasses,! either with indiffer¬ 
ence or with aversion. The sweet-scented violets, honeysuckles, 
lilies, and pinks appear to them distasteful, and the eye-bright, 
rattleseed, poppy, and cowslip will be left untouched in the pasture 
and roadside. Kerner states that Alchemilla vulgaris is never 
touched, although the little blossoms are imbedded in green leaves, 
and the plant is growing in spots frequented by grazing animals. 
Some years ago I had a mare which would frequently snatch a rose 
from my buttonhole, and eat the leaves but drop the flower. 
Larvae which feed on the leaves of a particular plant will rather 
starve than eat the flower. Over-fed pastures have but few flowers, 
in consequence of the animals being compelled to eat what they 
can find and not what they like; but any one who watches how 
they avoid flowers where there is an abundance of verdure, will 
realize their natural preferences. Buttercups and daisies are so 
plentiful in some fields that they are frequently seized with the 
grasses and afterwards dropped. The ray-florets of many of the 
Composite are distasteful,]; and often contain matter which is 
excessively poisonous to insects. In the case of Pyrethrum , the 
ray-florets are more poisonous than the disc-florets in the ratio of 
about three to two. 
* ‘ Loves of the Plants,’ Canto iii. 
t I refer to this.exception in the conclusion of my address. The easy dissemi¬ 
nation of the seeds of grasses maybe regarded as one of the defences of the species. 
f See Darwin’s ‘ Forms of Flowers,’ p. 6. 
