. Flowers and their pedigrees . thoughyou might never talk of a railway journey withoutgiving at full the theory of kinetic energy as appliedto the coal in the furnace. For their sake, then, Imust add that, when the daisys ancestors had reacheda level of development equivalent to that of the heathand the Canterbury bell, they differed in one respectfrom them just as the primrose stiil does. In theheath and the harebell, the stamens remain quiteseparate from the tube formed by the petals ; but inthe primrose and the daisy the stalks of the stamens(filaments, the technical botanistscall them) ha
. Flowers and their pedigrees . thoughyou might never talk of a railway journey withoutgiving at full the theory of kinetic energy as appliedto the coal in the furnace. For their sake, then, Imust add that, when the daisys ancestors had reacheda level of development equivalent to that of the heathand the Canterbury bell, they differed in one respectfrom them just as the primrose stiil does. In theheath and the harebell, the stamens remain quiteseparate from the tube formed by the petals ; but inthe primrose and the daisy the stalks of the stamens(filaments, the technical botanistscall them) have coalesced with thepetals, so that the pollen seems tohang out in little bags from thewalls of the tube itself. This isa further advance in the directionof specialised arrangements forinsect-fertilisation ; and it showsvery simply the sort of cross-connections which we often getamong plants or animals. For while the daisy ismore like the Canterbury bell in the shape of itscorolla, it is more like the primrose in the arrange-. Fig. of floret of Daisy. Flowcjs and their Pcdicrces. ment of its stamens. Or, to put it more plainly,while the Canterbury bell has hit upon one modeof adaptation in the form of its tube, and whilethe primrose has hit upon another mode in the in-sertion of its stamens, the daisy has hit upon bothtogether, and has combined them in a single now, my dear Smelfungus, having given way toyour prejudices upon this matter, allow me to assureyou that nothing will induce me to enter into thefurther and wholly immaterial difference betweenhypogynous and epigynous corollas. For every onebut you, the very names, I am sure, will be quitesufficient apology for my reticence. These, in fact,are subjects which, like the old familiar Decline andFall off the Rooshian Empire, had better be discussedMn the absence of Mrs. Boffin. When the ancestors of the daisy had reached thestage of united tubular blossoms, like the harebell,with stamens fastened to th
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1884
