Page - 111 - in The Origin of Species

ON THE INTERCROSSING OF INDIVIDUALS 111 scarcely possible for insects to fly from flower to flower, and not to carry pollen from one to the other, to the great good of the plant. Insects act like a camel-hair pencil, and it is sufficient, to ensure fertilisation, just to touch with the same brush the anthers of one flower and then the stigma of an- other; but it must not be supposed that bees would thus pro- duce a multitude of hybrids between distinct species; for if a plant's own pollen and that from another species are placed on the same stigma, the former is so prepotent that it in- variably and completely destroys, as has been shown by Gart- ner, the influence of the foreign pollen. When the stamens of a flower suddenly spring towards the pistil, or slowly move one after the other towards it, the con- trivance seems adapted solely to ensure self-fertilisation ; and no doubt it is useful for this end : but the agency of insects is often required to cause the stamens to spring forward, as Kolreuter has shown to be the case with the barberry ; and in this very genus, which seems to have a special contrivance for self-fertilisation, it is well known that, if closely-allied forms or varieties are planted near each other, it is hardly possible to raise pure seedlings, so largely do they naturally cross. In numerous other cases, far from self-fertilisation being favoured, there are special contrivances which eflfec- tually prevent the stigma receiving pollen from its own flower, as I could show from the works of Sprengel and others, as well as from my own observations : for instance, in Lobelia fulgens, there is a really beautiful and elaborate contrivance by which all the infinitely numerous pollen- granules are swept out of the conjoined anthers of each flower, before the stigma of that individual flower is ready to receive them; and as this flower is never visited, at least in my garden, by insects, it never sets a seed, though by placing pollen from one flower on the stigma of another, I raise plenty of seedlings. Another species of Lobelia, which is visited by bees, seeds freely in my garden. In very many other cases, though there is no special mechanical contrivance to prevent the stigma receiving pollen from the same flower, yet, as Sprengel, and more recently Hildebrand, and others, have shown, and as I can confirm, either the anthers burst be- fore the stigma is ready for fertilisation, or the stigma is