Note 17 — ON THE UTILITY TO FLOWERS OF THEIR BEAUTY.

Do the facts justify us in concluding that insect fertilization is more beneficial to the plant than fertilization by the wind or any other agency? Do they afford any sufficient cause for that change from the one mode of fertilization to the other which has been suggested? The facts bearing on these questions are very remarkable; for, as we have already seen, many plants produce two kinds of blossom, the one conspicuous and the other inconspicuous; the one visited by insects, the other self-fertilizing. Recent observation shows that these cleistogamous flowers, as they are called, are present in a great variety of plants.17 In the violet they are found to exist, being seen in the summer and autumn, when all the more brilliant flowers have gone. The one flower has everything in its favour—honey and a beauty of colour and of smell that has passed into a proverb—and it opens its blue wings to the visits of the insect tribe in the season of their utmost jollity and life. The other has everything against it: it is inconspicuous, scentless, ugly, and closed. And yet, which succeeds the better? which produces the more seed? The cleistogamous, and not the brilliant flowers: the victory is with ugliness, and not with beauty.