SHORT CUTS BY BIRDS TO NECTARIES. 397 
head and did not seem, so far as I saw, to go as high as the bulbul : she 
seemed to avoid plunging right in amongst the pollen-covered anthers. I 
saw no recognizable instance of splitting. On visiting her flowers and those 
of her mate, I found the underside of a number of the lower flowers slit, 
but the majority of the slits were not, I judged, fresh. The slits might well, 
in some cases, have been made accidentally by a curved bill in emerging. 
“There were a few hive-bees at the flowers. I watched three in 
particular. One was collecting pollen—she was carrying the usual masses 
of it. The other two were definitely trying for honey. They never went 
further in than the mouth of the flower, but in many cases a little honey 
was present there, having rolled out from inside. Pollen-eating flies were 
present and at work." 
“June 3rd, 1918. р.м. Visited the two Kniphofia plants near Chipete. 
Very few birds at either these or at the masses of Leonotis on the Chipete 
outskirts. Two bulbuls (Pycnonotus layardi) at Kniphofia and one sunbird at 
Leonotis was the sum total. 
“I saw one head that was bent over in such a way as not only to give a 
bird a very difficult approach (relatively to the flowers’ natural openings), 
but in which those flowers that opened on to this unusual approach were 
splayed away from one another, scanty, irregular, and not mutually pro- 
tective. I had already examined many heads without finding greater 
damage than I have already noted in the ease of those at the dam, and I was 
curious, therefore, to know how so irregular a head had fared—so made my 
way to it. I found several of the irregular flowers (none of the regular 
ones) with discontinuous slits or punctures. Another head, standing right 
beside this one and normal except for a *twist? devoid of flowers that was 
still, however, in the region of unopened buds, showed no damage except a 
few of the normal slits. The two heads were not isolated, but stood together 
in the midst of a scattered clump of the plants. I therefore collected 
without selection all of the 20 heads that were nearest to them (even 
the furthest was within a very few yards), as well as these two, and took 
them home and examined them with the following result:— 
“No. 1 (Pl. 38. fig. 5). The abnormal raceme in question. It was bent 
over at right angles just below the ‘mat,’ probably as the result of insect 
(Acridian ?) damage at that point. Still, some of its neighbours, damaged 
exactly similarly and quite as deeply and severely, remained erect. The 
open flowers on the upper surface were as Г have described them. Their 
openings were largely averted from an approaching bird and their bases 
exposed. АП the remaining flowers were densely and normally packed. 
* Of the 35 flowers that were more or less exposed (by irregularity and 
lack of mutual protection) to a bird perched on the top of the horizontal 
portion of the mat, 29 showed punctures and bill-marks, in every case on the 
side exposed. This was most strikingly the case. Thus the flowers leaning 
