115 
pollen carriers than for the parts of the style to curve around 
and gather their own pollen, functionally intended for the use 
of other flowers. Viewed in this manner they would not be 
termed useless guests, or be classed among the insects engaged 
in petty thefts* (Diebstahle) while busily crawling about among 
the hairs of the Marsh Bellwort, which they do so easily, but 
among those lawfully employed in proper work. 
I].—Sabbatia angularis, Pursh. 
This handsome member of the Gentian family is a common 
plant in many of the damp places of our pine barrens, blooming 
in late summer and early autumn. But its floral beauty is not its 
sole feature of attraction. The mechanism to secure cross- 
fertilization by the help of insects is still more interesting. The 
flowers, like others of the genus, are proterandrous, and skillfully 
contrived to secure this end. They have a wheel-shaped corolla, 
rose-pink in‘color, very bright and attractive to the eye. At the 
base of its short tube is a yellow or greenish-yellow spot, shaped 
somewhat like a star with five short, blunt rays, bordered by a 
dark red or purple band, contrasting sharply with the general 
color of the flower. The style is bent downward and outward, 
bringing it to one side of the flower, or away from the floral axis. 
It is deeply two-cleft; occasionally three-cleft. In the bud the 
corolla is dextrorsely convolute. The style and its parts share 
in the same spiral movement seen in the twisting of the bud, it 
being sinistrorsely twisted. The two parts of the style face each — 
other, their inner surfaces stigmatic for the greater part of their 
length and thickly covered with glandular hairs. These parts 
are closed in the bud, and until after the anthers burst. The bend- 
ing of the style is in a plane parallel with the cleft, or away from 
which the two parts of the style would recede at a right angle if 
they were not twisted. This would leave the stigmas with their 
edges only presented to the body of an insect at work above or 
below them, unless they spread considerably, so as to allow it to 
pass through the fork between them, which is not the case. But 
the twisting, owing to the length of the parts, tends to hold them 
together, as a cord is twisted to bind its threads better. Yet it 
-* Miller, Befruchtung der Blumen, p. 373. 
