han life. 1. An entire flower
seen from the side. _st._ The stigma, _a2_. The pair of modified
half-anthers which are pushed back by the bee when inserting its head
into the narrow part of the flower. 2. A similar flower at a later
stage when the stigma, _st._, has grown downwards so as to touch the
back of a bee alighting on the lip of the flower, and gather pollen
from it. 3. Diagram of one of the two stamens. _f._ The stalk or
filament of the stamen. _a1_. The pollen-producing half-anther, _eo._
The elongated connective joining it to the sterile half-anther. 4.
Section through a flower showing _ov._ the ovary; _nec._ the nectary
or honey-glands; _st._ the style; _li._ the lip of the flower on which
the bee alights. 5. Similar section showing the effect of the pushing
back of _a2_ by the bee, and the downward swinging of the
polliniferous half-anther so as to dust the bee's back with pollen.
The dotted arrow shows the direction of the push given by the bee.]

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--The Edelweiss, _Gnaphalium leontopodium_.]

As I walked on, a belated Apollo butterfly, with its two red spots,
and a pale Swallow-tail fluttered by me. Then some children emerged
from unsuspected lurking-places in the wood and offered bunches of
edelweiss (Fig. 2). This curious-looking little plant does not grow
(as pretended by reporters of mountaineering disasters) exclusively in
places only to be reached by a dangerous climb. I have gathered it in
meadows on the hillside above Zermatt, and it is common enough in
accessible spots. The flowers are like those of our English groundsel
and yellow in colour--little "composite" knobs, each built up of many
tubular "florets" packed side by side. Six or seven of these little
short-stalked knobs of florets are arranged in a circlet around a
somewhat larger knob, and each of them gives off from its stalk one
long and two shorter white, hairy, leaf-like growths, flat and
blade-like in shape and spreading outwards from the circle, so that
the whole series resemble the rays of a star (or more truly of a
star-fish!). They look strangely artificial, as though cut out of new
white flannel (with a greenish tint), and have been dignified
by the comparison of the shape of the white-flannel rays with that
of the foot of the lion and the claws of the eagle. They are
extraordinary-looking little plants, and are similar in their
hairiness and pale tint to some of the seaside plants on our own
coast, which,