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Updated: May 11, 2025
This miscarriage does not affect all the grains in the same degree, and under the microscope a few of them with an apparently normal structure may be seen. But the contents are not normally developed, and I have tried in vain to obtain fertilization with a large number of flowers. Only by cross-fertilization does O. lata produce seeds, and then as freely as the other species when self-fertilized.
Similarly the red forms may suddenly produce striped ones, and this too is to be taken as a sport, according to the usual conception of the word. Such sports may occur in different ways. Either by seeds, or by buds, or even within the single spikes. Both opposite reversions, from striped to red and from red to stripes, occur by seed, even by the strictest exclusion of cross-fertilization.
It is the legitimate explanation of those arrangements in Nature to secure cross-fertilization in the species, either constantly or occasionally, which are so general, so varied and diverse, and, we may add, so exquisite and wonderful, that, once propounded, we see that it must be true.* What else, indeed, is the meaning and
Nectar is secreted in the hollow of the lip indicated, somewhat as in the cypripedium. If we now imitate with a probe the habit of the insect and the action of its tongue, we may witness a beautiful contrivance for cross-fertilization. We will suppose the bee to be working at the top of the spike.
Economic and even medical aspects should appear, and prominent and early should come the whole matter of self cross-fertilization and that by insects. The moral value of this subject will never be fully understood till we have what might almost be called a woman's botany, constructed on lines different from any of the text-books I have glanced at.
The weight of this objection is obvious; but our ignorance of the conditions of fertility and sterility, the want of carefully conducted experiments extending over long series of years, and the strange anomalies presented by the results of the cross-fertilization of many plants, should all, as Mr. Darwin has urged, be taken into account in considering it.
If the offspring shows more than one type, cross-fertilization is always to be looked to as the most probable cause, and should be excluded, in order to sow pure seeds. Garden-experiments of this kind, and repeated trials, should always be combined with the discovery of a presumed mutation.
Cross-fertilization is dear to her, and she invents many ingenious ways to bring it about, as in certain orchids. She will rob the bones of the fowl of their lime to perfect the shell of the egg. She wastes no wit or cunning on the porcupine or on the skunk, because she has already endowed each of them with a perfect means of defense. Two things Nature is not chary of fear and pain.
In effecting the cross-fertilization of one of the younger flowers its eyes are again brought into contact with this second pair of discs, and these, with their pollen clubs, are in turn withdrawn, at length perhaps resulting in such a plastering of the insect's eyes as might seriously impair its vision, were it not fortunately of the compound sort.
Limited, stubborn and formless though she be, nature has at last been subjected and her master has succeeded in changing, through chemical reaction, the earth's substances, in using combinations which had been long matured, cross-fertilization processes long prepared, in making use of slips and graftings, and man now forces differently colored flowers in the same species, invests new tones for her, modifies to his will the long-standing form of her plants, polishes the rough clods, puts an end to the period of botch work, places his stamp on them, imposes on them the mark of his own unique art."
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