ombining the united petals with the irregular shape; and these are
almost invariably purple or blue.

AMONG THE HEATHER

From 'The Evolutionist at Large'

I suppose even that apocryphal person, the general reader, would be
insulted at being told at this hour of the day that all bright-colored
flowers are fertilized by the visits of insects, whose attentions they
are specially designed to solicit. Everybody has heard over and over
again that roses, orchids, and columbines have acquired their honey to
allure the friendly bee, their gaudy petals to advertise the honey, and
their divers shapes to insure the proper fertilization by the correct
type of insect. But everybody does not know how specifically certain
blossoms have laid themselves out for a particular species of fly,
beetle, or tiny moth. Here on the higher downs, for instance, most
flowers are exceptionally large and brilliant; while all Alpine climbers
must have noticed that the most gorgeous masses of bloom in Switzerland
occur just below the snow-line. The reason is, that such blossoms must
be fertilized by butterflies alone. Bees, their great rivals in
honey-sucking, frequent only the lower meadows and slopes, where flowers
are many and small: they seldom venture far from the hive or the nest
among the high peaks and chilly nooks where we find those great patches
of blue gentian or purple anemone, which hang like monstrous breadths of
tapestry upon the mountain sides. This heather here, now fully opening
in the warmer sun of the southern counties--it is still but in the bud
among the Scotch hills, I doubt not--specially lays itself out for the
humble-bee, and its masses form almost his highest pasture-grounds; but
the butterflies--insect vagrants that they are--have no fixed home, and
they therefore stray far above the level at which bee-blossoms
altogether cease to grow. Now, the butterfly differs greatly from the
bee in his mode of honey-hunting: he does not bustle about in a
business-like manner from one buttercup or dead-nettle to its nearest
fellow; but he flits joyously, like a sauntering straggler that he is,
from a great patch of color here to another great patch at a distance,
whose gleam happens to strike his roving eye by its size and brilliancy.
Hence, as that indefatigable observer, Dr. Hermann Mueller, has noticed,
all Alpine or hill-top flowers have very large and conspicuous blossoms,
generally grouped together in big clusters so as to catc