Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/106

96 lower animals, and plants. This I have more thoroughly touched upon in a previous paper.

The perfumes attached to plants and the animate creation are in both instances used for like purposes, generally to attract, sometimes to repel.

The feasting and temporary entrapping of the flies within the spathe of the arum until the pollen has been dusted upon their backs for distribution, have been compared to the feasting of the old-day voters at the candidate's expense.

The intermarriage of near relatives, or the interbreeding among home flocks, is most disastrous in its effect upon the offspring. Plant life appears to be aware of all this, and adopts the most startling devices for its confutation. Some of these devices are worth tabulating:

 I. Staminate flowers, pistillate flowers—these may be monœcious or diœcious. II. Pistils elevated above the stamens. III. Pistils arranged at different heights, as in the pin-eyed and rose-eyed roses. IV. Different sizes and lengths of both stamens and pistils, as in the purple loosestrife. V. Their own pollen acts injuriously to the pistils of some flowers, as in the primroses. VI. Most startling observation of all—the pistil is cleft and the two stigmatic portions are maintained closed until the pollen of the flower is removed—as in the salvias. VII. The catkins of the oak are beautiful devices for the winds of spring to scatter the pollen. VIII. The facts collected by Darwin in the natural history of orchids. IX. The milkweeds are said to be able to discriminate between those insects that will be able to cross them and those that will not. Their vengeance upon the useless intruder is indeed vindictive—they seize upon and hold him till he dies. X. The stamens and pistils do not always ripen at the same time. XI. In order to save their own increase and insure crossing, some flowers denote to insects an absence of honey by a change in the color of their petals.

Ah observant gardener informs me that races of plants improve and improve by proper cultivation and care until they reach their zenith. The zenith being reached, the greatest care is necessary, lest the decline should begin; but, with the necessary amount of care, the height of their prosperity may be prolonged indefinitely, but once the decline begins, the fall to probable extinction has inevitably commenced. How well may this be likened to the career of nations! Internal dissensions and the agitator's wile may ruin the backbone and trade of a country, and hasten on its fall. The noble and broad-minded statesman is the conscientious