Love dramas, too, tragic and comic, are enacted in this world of flowers and insects. Thus the Arum plant resorts to the following stratagem to secure a messenger of love for carrying its pollen to a distant female flower:— “The stigmas come to maturity first, and have lost the possibility of fertilisation before the pollen is ripe. The pollen must therefore be brought by insects, and this is effected by small flies, which enter the leaf, either for the sake of honey or of shelter, and which, moreover, when they have once entered the tube, are imprisoned by the fringe of hairs. When the anthers ripen, the pollen falls on to the flies, which, in their efforts to escape, get thoroughly dusted with it. Then the fringe of hairs withers, and the flies, thus set free, soon come out, and ere long carry the pollen to another plant” (Lubbock). Then there are male flowers which go a-courting like any amorous swain of a Sunday night. One of these belongs to the Valisneria plant, concerning which the same writer observes that “the female flowers are borne on long stalks, which reach to the surface of the water, on which the flowers float. The male flowers, on the contrary, have short, straight stalks, from which, when mature, the pollen detaches itself, rises to the surface, and, floating freely on it, is wafted about, so that it comes in contact with the female flowers.” But alas for the poor flowers! Few of them are thus privileged to roam about and seek their own bride. Most flowers have no more free choice in the selection of their spouse than an Oriental or a French girl. There is no previous acquaintance, no courtship before marriage, hence no Romantic Love, even if the undifferentiated germs of nervous protoplasm in the plant were capable of feeling such an emotion. Poor flowers! Their honeymoon is without pleasure, unconscious. The wind may woo, the butterfly caress them—but the wind has no thought of the flower, and the insect’s attachment is mere “cupboard love.” The beauty of one flower cannot exist for another which has no eyes to see it; its honey and its fragrance are not for a floral lover’s delight, but for a gastronomic insect’s epicurean use. No modest coyness, no harmless flirtation, no gallant devotion and self-sacrifice, enter into the flower’s sexual life; not even the bitter-sweet pangs of jealousy, for, as Heine has ascertained, “the butterfly stops not to ask the flower, ‘Has any one kissed thee before?’ nor does the flower ask, ‘Hast thou already flitted about another?’” Thus “flower-love,” with all its poetic analogies, has none of the elements of Romantic Love. Even attraction fails, for plants are commonly sessile, and cannot go forth to seek a mate. “I prayed the flowers, Oh, tell me, what is love? Only _a fragrant sigh_ was wafted Thro’ the night.”—_German Song._