groups blue distinctly forms the prevalent | white; and this, I think, fairly establishes color. the fact that white is a higher developThe composites, to which belong the ment of color than yellow; for the change daisies and dandelions, also give us some must have been made in order to attract extremely striking evidence. Each flow- special insects. Certainly, such a differer-head here consists of a number of small entiation of the flowers in a single head florets, crowded together so as to re- cannot be without a good purpose. In the semble a single blossom. So far as our true daisy, again, the white rays become present purpose is concerned, they fall tipped with pink, which sometimes rises naturally into three groups. The first is almost to rose-color; and this stage is that of the dandelions and hawkweeds, exactly analogous to that of apple-blossom, with open florets, fertilized, as a rule, by which similarly halts on the way from very small insects; and these are gen- white petals to red. In the asters and erally yellow, with only a very few diver- Michaelmas daisies we get a further adgent species. The second is that of the vance to purple, lilac, and mauve, while thistle-heads, visited by an immense num- both in these and in the chrysanthemums ber of insects, including the bees; and true shades of blue not infrequently apthese are almost all purple, while some pear. The cinerarias of our gardeners highly evolved species, like the corn- are similar forms of highly developed flower or bluebottle and the true arti- groundsels from the Canary Islands. choke, are bright blue. The third is that I must pass over the blue tubular genof the daisies and asters, with tubular tians and periwinkles, with many other central florets and long, flattened outer like cases, for I can only find room for rays; and these demand a closer exam-two more families. One of these, the ination here.

borage kind, has highly modified flowers, The central florets of the daisy tribe, with a tube below and spreading lobes as a rule, are bright golden; a fact which above; in addition to which most of the shows pretty certainly that they are de- species possess remarkable and strongly scended from a common ancestor who developed appendages to the corolla, in was also yellow. Moreover, these yellow the way of teeth, crowns, hairs, scales, florets are bell-shaped, and each contain parapets, or valves. Of the common a pistil and five stamens, like any other British species alone, the forget-me-nots perfect flower. But the outer florets are are clear sky-blue with a yellow eye; the generally sterile; and instead of being viper's bugloss is at first reddish purple, bell-shaped they are split down one side and afterwards a deep blue; the lungwort and unrolled, so as to form a long ray; is also dark blue; and so are the two alka while their corolla is at the same time nets, the true bugloss, the madwort, and much larger than that of the central the familiar borage of our claret-cup, blossoms. In short, they are sterilized though all of them by reversion occasionmembers of the compound flower-head, ally produce purple or white flowers. specially set apart for the work of display; Houndstongue is purple red, and most of and thus they stand to the entire flower- the other species vary between purple and head in the same relation as petals do to blue; indeed throughout the family most the simple original flower. The analogy flowers are red at first and blue as they between the two is complete. Just as mature. Of these, borage at least is hathe petal is a specialized and sterilized bitually fertilized by bees, and I believe stamen told off to do duty as an allurer of the same to be partially true of many of insects for the benefit of the whole flower, the other species. The second highly so the ray-floret is a specialized and ster-evolved family to which I wish to draw ilized blossom told off to do the self-same attention is that of the labiates duty for the benefit of the group of tiny flowers which make up the composite flower-head.

Now, the earliest ray-florets would naturally be bright yellow, like the tubular blossoms of the central disk from which they sprang. And to this day the ray-florets of the simplest daisy types, such as the cornmarigold, the sunflower, and the ragwort, are yellow like the central flowers. In the camomile, however, the ox-eye daisy, and the mayweed, the rays have become

perhaps the most specialized of any so far as regards insect fertilization. Not only are they tubular, but they are very bilateral and irregular indeed, displaying more modification of form than any other flowers except the orchids. Almost all of them are purple or blue. Among the bestknown English species are thyme, mint, marjoram, sage, and basil, which I need hardly say are great favorites with bees. Ground-ivy is bright blue; catmint, pale blue; prunella, violet purple; and com

mon bugle, blue or flesh-color. Many of vated in gardens on account of their bithe others are purple or purplish.** Itzarre and fantastic shapes and colors. must be added that in both these families As to the orchids, I need hardly say any the flowers are very liable to vary within thing about their wonderfully spotted and the limit of the same species; and red, variegated flowers. Even in our small white, or purple specimens are common in English kinds the dappling is extremely all the normally blue kinds. marked, especially upon the expanded and profoundly modified lower lip; but in the larger tropical varieties the patterns are often quaint and even startling in their extraordinary richness of fancy and apparent capriciousness of design. Mr. Darwin has shown that their adaptations to insects are more intimate and more marvellous than those of any other flowers whatsoever.

Sometimes, indeed, we may say that the new color has not yet begun to fix itself in the species, but that the hue still varies under our very eyes. Of this the little milkwort (a plant of the type with separate petals) affords an excellent example, for it is occasionally white, usually pink, and not infrequently blue; so that in all probability it is now actually in course of acquiring a new color. Much Structurally speaking, the spots and the same thing happens with the common lines on petals seem to be the direct repimpernel. Its ancestral form is proba-sult of high modification; but functionbly the woodland loosestrife, which is yellow; but pimpernel itself is usually orange red, while a blue variety is frequent on the Continent, and sometimes appears in England as well. Every botanist can add half-a-dozen equally good instances from his own memory.

So far I have spoken only of what the ladies would call self-color, as though every flower were of one unvaried hue throughout. I must now add a few words on the subject of the spots and lines which so often variegate the petals in certain species. On this subject, again, Mr. Wallace's hint is full of meaning. Every where in nature, he points out, spots and eyes of color appear on the most highly modified parts, and this rule applies most noticeably to the case of petals. Simple regular flowers, like the buttercups and roses, hardly ever have any spots or lines; but in very modified forms like the labiates and the orchids they are extremely common. The scrophularineous family, to which the snapdragon belongs, is one most specially adapted to insects, and even more irregular than that of the labiates; and here we find the most singular effects produced by dappling and mixture of colors. The simple yellow mullein, it is true, has no such spots or lines, nor have even many of the much higher blue veronicas; but in the snapdragons, the foxglove, the toadflax, the ivy-linaria, the eyebright, and the calceolarias, the intimate mixture of colors is very noticeable. In the allied tropical bignonias and gloxinias we see much the same distribution of hues. Many of the family are culti

* Our English archangels and a few others are yelare doubtless due to special insect selection in a retro

low. Such cases of reversion are not uncommon, and

grade direction.

ally, as Sprengel long ago pointed out, they act as honey-guides, and for this purpose they have no doubt undergone special selection by the proper insects. Lines are comparatively rare on regular flowers, but they tend to appear as soon as the flower becomes even slightly bilateral, and they point directly towards the nectaries. The geranium family affords an excellent illustration of this law. The regular forms are mostly uniform in hue; but many of the South African pelargoniums, cultivated in gardens and hot-houses, are slightly bilateral, the two upper petals standing off from the three lower ones; and these two become at once marked with dark lines, which are in some cases scarcely visible, and in others fairly pronounced. From this simple beginning one can trace a gradual progress in heterogeneity of coloring, till at last the most developed bilateral forms have the two upper petals of quite a different hue from the three lower ones, besides being deeply marked with belts and spots of dappled color. In the allied tropæolum or Indian cress (the so-called nasturtium of old-fashioned gardens, though the plant is really no more related to the watercress and other true nasturtiums than we ourselves are to the great kangaroo) this tendency is carried still further. Here, the calyx is prolonged into a deep spur, containing the honey, inaccesssible to any but a few large insects; and towards this spur all the lines on the petals converge. Sir John Lubbock observes that without such conventional marks to guide them, bees would waste a great deal of time in bungling about the mouths of flowers; for they are helpless, blundering things at an emergency, and never know their way twice to the same place if any

change has been made in the disposition | ward is true, the special colors of different of the familiar surroundings.

and by always selecting such where possible, they both keep up and sharpen their own taste, and at the same time give additional opportunities to the blue flowers, which thus ensure proper fertilization. I believe it ought always to be the object of naturalists in this manner to show not only why such and such spontaneous variation should have been favored whenever it occurred, but also to show why and how it could ever have occurred at all. GRANT ALlen.

flowers are due to no mere spontaneous Finally, there remains the question accident, nay, even to no meaningless why have some flowers green petals? caprice of the fertilizing insects. They This is a difficult problem to attack at the are due in their inception to a regular law end of a long paper; and indeed it is one of progressive modification; and they of little interest for ninety-nine people have been fixed and stereotyped in each out of a hundred; since the flowers with species by the selective action of the green petals are mostly so small and in- proper beetles, bees, moths, or butterflies. conspicuous that nobody but a profes- Not only can we say why such a color, sional botanist ever troubles his head once happening to appear, has been fa about them. The larger part of the vored in the struggle for existence, but world is somewhat surprised to learn that also why that color should ever make its there are such things as green flowers at appearance in the first place, which is a all; though really they are far commoner condition precedent to its being favored than the showy-colored ones. Neverthe- or selected at all. For example, blue less, lest I should seem to be shirking a pigments are often found in the most difficulty altogether, I shall add that I highly developed flowers, because blue believe green petals to be in almost every pigments are a natural product of high case degraded representatives of earlier modification — a simple chemical outcome yellow or white ones. This belief is clean of certain extremely complex biological contrary to the accepted view, which rep-changes. On the other hand, bees show resents the green, wind-fertilized blos- a marked taste for blue, because blue is soms as older in order of time than their the color of the most advanced flowers; colored insect-fertilized allies. Nevertheless, I think all botanists will allow that such green or greenish flowers as the hellebores, the plantains, the lady's mantle, the salad-burnet, the moschatel, the twayblade, and the parsley-piert are certainly descended from bright-hued ancestors, and have lost their colors on their petals though acquiring the habit of windfertilization or self-fertilization. Starting from these, I can draw no line as I go downward in the scale through such flowers as knawel, goose-foot, dog's mercury, nettle, and arrowgrass, till I get to absolutely degraded blossoms like glasswort, callitriche, and pondweed, whose real nature nobody but a botanist would ever suspect. Whether the catkins, the grasses, and the sedges were ever provided with petals I do not venture to guess; but certainly wherever we find the merest rudiment of a perianth I am compelled to believe that the plant has descended from bright-colored ancestors, however remotely. And when we look at the very degraded blossoms of the spurges, which we know by the existence of intermediate links to be derived from perianth-bearing forefathers, the possibility at least of this being also true of catkins and grasses cannot be denied. So far as I can see, the conifers and cycads are the only flow-erners. ering plants which we can be quite sure never possessed colored and attractive petals. But this digression is once more only intended for the scientifically-minded

reader.

66

From Fraser's Magazine. CERVO.

WHO ever heard of Cervo, except a few angry travellers, who wonder why the train stops at so insignificant a place? Who ever heard of San Remo half a century ago? Yet in another fifty years Cervo runs a good chance of being as well known as any of the health resorts on the Riviera. It is only an hour by train from San Remo, and an energetic French company is now intent on plans for villas and hotels, which will transmogrify this little Italian fishing-village into a busy hospital for winter-dreading north

Shielded from every wintry blast, basking in the sunshine, which glimmers amongst the olive groves, the Cervo of to-day dreams away its existence, feeding still, however, on romantic memories of the past; the one sad tale of Cervo hovers

still in the memory of the primitive inhab- | absent for perhaps three weeks at a time itants, haunts the precincts of the domi- on this secret errand; they knew that nating parish church, and can still be read in the tall white houses and narrow rugged streets, which climb towards the summit of the rock on which the foundations of the village are laid.

they returned home with the seven sloops, which formed the little trading fleet of Cervo, laden to overflowing with precious coral, yet they could not for the life of them discover where this fruitful coral bed lay, and in the knowledge of this consisted the secret of the fishermen of Cervo.

Cervo had its days of prosperity and influence once, but those days are now two hundred years ago. It was then a sort of independent little state, owing In those days the freemen of Cervo some vague allegiance to a neighboring were wont to make conventions with the marquis, but was virtually governed by a freemen of Celle, another coral fishing vilsyndic and mnnicipal council, elected and lage a few miles nearer Genoa. These chosen by the free-born fishermen. Their conventions consisted in promises of asprosperity and wealth they owed to the sistance in case of need, commercial items possession of a secret, religiously and de- with regard to coral, and promises if they voutly kept by the two hundred and fifty discovered their respective coral beds, fishermen who shared it, and into the not to interfere with the same, or to dismysteries of which every male inhabitant close their locality to others. Whether was initiated, when he arrived at man's the men of Celle had the same rules for estate, and when he was thought equal the confraternity, whether the females of to undertaking that mysterious voyage Celle were in the same condition of beacross the seas with his father, his broth-nighted ignorance as those of Cervo, will ers, and his friends, in search of the wealth which was rapidly making Cervo what it is to-day.

perhaps never be known, for the books of the commune of Celle exist no longer.

Now, as we have seen, Donna Caterina Rolandi thought she knew far more than the other women. She always held her head above them in their private gossips, when the female part of the community sat mending nets on the little flat square on the rock-side on to which Donna Rolandi could emerge from the top story of her house, whereas the lower entrance opened into an orange and lemon garden, beyond which an olive grove led down to the water's edge. She would always maintain that in the dead of night she had wormed the secret out of her lord; but when she told them that the syndic affirmed that the coral bed lay exactly a

By all that he valued in this life or the next, by the blessed Virgin, by the whole calendar of saints, the young Cervese swore never to reveal this secret to living man, never to breathe a word of it in the presence of the inhabitants of any other town, and above all, never to divulge it to the fair sex, "who," says the form of oath, "are prone to gossip with their neighbors and might unawares betray our secret." As one young Cervese swore, so did generations of Cervesi swear, before being admitted into the holy brotherhood of fishermen, between whom there existed a freemasonry which was at once the cause of their prosperity, and the sub-million palmi from the church they only sequent ruin of Cervo.

No one was more anxious to discover this secret than Donna Caterina Rolandi, wife of the syndic of Cervo, who in his young days had been an honored member of the confraternity of fishermen; but now his active toiling life was over, and having obtained the highest honors which the municipality could bestow on him, he passed his days in the Town Hall, where he dispensed justice and administered correction; and in his comfortable mansion near the Pomegranate Square, where he was forever being judged and corrected by his better half.

Donna Caterina knew a great deal of the secret in fact all the women of Cervo thought they did. They knew that their husbands, sons, and brothers were

laughed at her, for though not many of them had been out far to sea, yet they were sure that a million palmi would not reach down below the horizon, and every woman of Cervo knew how with straining eyes they had watched the departing fishermen, and had lost the masts of their ships below that mysterious border-line betwixt sea and sky.

Don Stefano, the brother of the high priest of Cervo, was, however, the most revered personage who ever set foot in Cervo; he held a distinguished position in the Cathedral of Savona, and often tore himself away from the busy seaport town to meditate at Cervo, and to enliven the solitude of his brother and his flock; for the high priest of Cervo was not a man of energy like his brother. If he fulfilled

1

the requisite functions of his calling, and had plenty of time for trimming his vines on his garden plot down on the flat, he cared not how the rest of the world went on, and would have died of homesickness if obliged to leave Cervo for a week. Sora Julia, the maiden sister of the celibate brethren, managed their household affairs for them. Their house was not sumptuous, but comfortable, for the father of the three had been a distinguished coral fisher in his day, and had left to his offspring, after years of toil, a goodly heritage.

Don Stefano was an ambitious man, Don Pietro was not; and Don Stefano, having performed in the spacious marbleencrusted Cathedral of Savona, felt keenly and bitterly the disgrace of the shabby Church of St. Niccola at Cervo; its bare, whitewashed walls, its wooden altar piece, and its tawdry Madonna. Fat Don Pietro worshipped there in contentment and peace; mumbled his prayers just twice as quick as his brother, and would more over skip a prayer from time to time if the vintage was nigh, or the olives required his attention. But ambitious Don Stefano determined that his brother should worship there no longer, that an edifice befitting the renown of his native Cervo and its wealth should be built, one which should dominate the town, and should ring with his own rich voice whenever he deigned to preach to his benighted relatives.

coral reef, the locality of which none of the females knew, and exhorted them to subscribe liberally to the new edifice.

This flame of ambition which Don Stefano had ignited grew apace. The magnates of the community were not slow to assemble; the syndic Rolandi, with full consent of his wife, gave his assent. Cervo lived now with a new light burning therein; every one talked of the new church, and, as is usual on such occasions, factions arose on every point connected with it, as to site and style; and on each succeeding day old St. Niccola and the sordid rags seemed more and more intol erable to them. Even Don Pietro himself felt somewhat goaded to action outside his vineyard, and languidly promised that if his crops did well this year, he would advance a little money towards the expenses.

The chief leaders of the two most formidable factions were Don Stefano himself, who was bent on a church crowning the summit of the town, and built on the Bauso, or level surface at the top of the rock, in all the gorgeousness of the roc coco style; and the syndic's wife, who had decided that the church should be nowhere else than in front of her own door on the Pomegranate Square, as it was called from some of those excellent trees which surrounded it.

What cared she about style? yet it was necessary for her to have her ideas on the subject. So she was of opinion that a plain, gaunt church, with a dome like St. Peter's, would be most befitting.

But Don Stefano, with his pulpit to preach from, and with his experience of the world, and, above all, with the influence appertaining to the originator of the scheme, was more than a match for Donna Caterina, though she was the syndic's wife, and had all the most active female tongues to back her up.

Fully determined on this scheme, Don Stefano swooped down from Savona one day, and gave out that on the morrow he would address the community of Cervo in his brother's church, and insinuated that he should be glad to see every one at this predica of his after the celebration of the mass. The inhabitants of Cervo did not often see Don Stefano in his best canonicals, his embroidered stole, his golden chasuble, and his snow-white alb; During this anxious time of debate and so there was a general hush amongst the plannings Don Stefano was more than congregation when he ascended the pul- ever at Cervo; he came regularly twice a pit and preached them a stirring sermon, week to perform mass, at which in pomfrom which they gathered, that he was pous voice he offered up a prayer to rather like Solomon, that his audience heaven that the inhabitants of Cervo resembled the chosen people of the Lord, might be illumined from above in search. and that a new and fitting temple for di- ing for a fitting architect for their church. vine worship must be erected in Cervo. This was most effective, far more so than He pointed out to them the iniquity of the babblings of signora the syndic's worshipping God in filthy rags-which wife; yet his inward conscience told Don simile was not pleasing to his brother, Stefano that as far as he was concerned and Sora Julia looked daggers-when the illumination from above had already they themselves could go about in purple shone forth, for all the while he was in and fine raiment; and he drew a glowing private correspondence with a well-known picture of the riches of that unknown | Milanese architect, Tomaso Agostino Ro