878 Wlarvels of the Universe 
Each minute grain of pollen will be found to consist of a bag filled with a speck of the living matter 
called protoplasm, which is the basis of all life, animal and vegetable. 
The central organ of the typical flower is the pistil consisting of three parts—the ovary at its 
base, containing ovules, above it the style, whose upper extremity is the sticky or hairy stigma. The 
ovules are intended to develop into seeds, but they cannot do so unless the contents of the pollen- 
grains reaches them and mingles with their own substance. In many flowers it is easy for the pollen 
as it falls from the anthers to become attached to the stigma; but in many other flowers there 
are various ingenious arrangements to prevent this happening—a mixture of the protoplasm of two 
distinct flowers or two distinct plants of the same species being desired. The contrivances for 
insuring this cross-pollination, as it is called, excite the admiration of all who have paid attention 
to the subject, but it is not our purpose at present to enter upon any details concerning these. We 
merely mention them here to explain why pollen taken from many different species of flowers 
should give us considerable variety of form and ornamentation. 
To get this pollen carried from the anthers of one flower to the stigma of another, the plant has 
by subtle enticements enlisted the services of many kinds of insects ; but in the cases of our forest- 
trees, our grasses and some other plants with inconspicuous green flowers, reliance is placed upon 
Ta a La ; [S. L. Bastin. 
POLLEN. 
Scots Pine. Thrift, or Sea Pink. White Dead-nettle. 
the wind as a carrier. It will easily be understood that pollen of quite different characters is 
required for these two chief classes of carriers ; in one case, a light, buoyant pollen grain that will 
not cling to its fellows; in the other, a sticky grain that will easily cling to the hairs of an insect’s 
face and legs. Wind-pollination is a speculative and wasteful method, and, therefore, we only find 
this method adopted by flowers of a more or less primitive type, such as the pines, oak, beech, birch, 
hazel, etc. The quantity of pollen these trees have to produce in excess of that actually effective 
in the fertilizing of ovules is prodigious. If set out in numbers, the figures would be almost un- 
believable. Walk in spring along the edge of a pine wood, and look into the hollows and pools in 
the direction in which the wind has been blowing. You will find the yellow pollen lying in heaps in 
the hollows and drifted to one side of the pool as a floating scum. Nearly every year there are 
letters in the newspapers describing these heaps as due to a rain of brimstone! so little do most of 
us know of the common and ever-recurring phenomena of our own little planet. The more highly- 
organized flowers, however, that have adapted their structure to the visits of insects—and in many 
cases to special species of insects—are more economical in their production of pollen. Their carriers 
are more reliable, and so their pollen is relatively scanty, due provision being made for the consider- 
able percentage the insects will appropriate to their own use. 
In the photographs reproduced as illustrations to this paper the examples have been drawn 
mainly from insect-pollinated flowers, and the names are set under them. It will be seen that most 
