Note 21 — ON THE UTILITY TO FLOWERS OF THEIR BEAUTY.

But to revert to conspicuousness. It is not true to say that all self-fertilized plants have inconspicuous flowers. I have adduced the Stephanotis and Hoya on this point. Nor is it true to say that all anemophilous flowers are inconspicuous as compared with the green of their leaves. The large but delicate yellow groups of the male flowers of the Scotch pine (not to travel beyond very familiar plants) are very conspicuous in the early summer—much more so, to my eye at least, than many flowers which are supposed to stake their lives on attraction by being conspicuous. Hermann Müller has observed on this same fact, and considers it to be clear that the display of colour can be of no use to the plant, and must therefore be regarded as "a merely accidental phenomenon,"21—i.e., a phenomenon not accounted for by utility.