404 МК. С. Е. М. SWYNNERTON ON 
A point that interested me in No. 2 was that the damage was confined to 
the lower rows out. This and the dry edges of the slits suggested that it 
had not been visited for a day or two. I counted the flowers of the upper 
and the lower rows separately. Result :— 
Split. Unsplit. 
Upper rows .... 0 41 | And 4 on the border line, hard to assign 
Lower rows .... 19 37 | to either category, were also split. 
It seems probable that the diameters of the bill and of the flower relatively 
to 6ne another determine whether and how deeply a flower will be split, and 
shape of bill and relative strength of different parts of the perianth whether 
the slits will be at side, above, or below. 
Sum тату — 
1. Numerous slits were found in the flowers of Kniphofia rhodesiana. 
They were probably for the most part produced accidentally, by the insertion 
of a bill too large for the flower. There was much variation in the diameter 
of the flowers on different racemes, and it was the small flowers or those 
with constricted necks that, on the whole, showed most accidental slitting. 
At the same time it was not a form of injury that seemed likely to lessen 
the flower’s chances of pollination. 
2. Punctures, mostly basal and evidently the intentional work of birds, 
were also found. They were only found in exposed flowers and only on the 
exposed surfaces of these—in eleven different racemes in all. Many 
hundreds of unexposed flowers were also examined, and none showed these 
punctures. 
3. It was perhaps interesting (from the selectionist point of view) that 
the character determining the incidence of the harmless form of damage 
was a very variable one—narrow flowers were as abundant as wider-mouthed 
ones ; while the exposed flower-bases that invited the more prejudicial form 
of damage were extremely uncommon. 
I. OBSERVATIONS ON OTHER PLANTS. 
ПаПета lucida, Linn., a small tree occurring on the outskirts of the 
Chirinda Forest and elsewhere, has rather short, tubular, brown corollas 
that are very much frequented by the rather short-billed sunbird, Antho- 
threptes hypodilus, Gadow, as well as by Cinnyris olivacina, Gadow. The 
pedicels are tough but exceedingly thin and pliable, and their very instability 
would probably make attempts to pierce the corolla in most cases a failure. 
Г have examined a very large number of the flowers and seen no evidence of 
piercing, the frequently split base of the corolla-tube having been in every 
case obviously due to the swelling of the fruit within. 
