124 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
before puncturing it. This year for the first time I have seen Pronuba 
at the anthers, once with Miss Johnson and Mr. Henry Hitchcock, once 
with Miss Johnson, and a third time with my wife. None of our obser- 
vations on this point could be made under a lens, the moth being more shy 
than at the other work. In the first case a moth that had been seen to 
Oviposit and pollinate once stopped and made a deliberate tour of the 
nearly empty anthers of the same flower, apparently scraping them out 
with its tentacles as Boll describes it, and with much the motion seen 
when she is thrusting pollen into the stigma. Frightened from the first 
flower, she went to another on the same cluster and rather nervously 
and hastily explored two anthers, after which, owing to the movements 
of so many persons about the plant, she became thoroughly alarmed 
and after nervously running about in several flowers, flew away. In the 
second case a moth similarly scraped an anther (or coiled and un- 
coiled its tentacles in it) but was frightened by our motions and, the 
light being strong (7:15 p. m.), crept to the bottom of the flower, re- 
maining there in the usual diurnal resting position. In the third case 
my wife saw a moth go through the acts of oviposition and pollination 
twice, after which she collected pollen from four or five stamens of the 
same flower; on being called I saw the operation repeated on another 
stamen. The collection of pollen was not actually seen in either of these 
cases, but only the perfectly deliberate and intentional act of going to 
the ends of the filaments and gouging the anthers out with the tentacles, 
and the observation was not close enough in any case to say that the 
moth did not meantime bring the pellet together by a lateral motion of 
the maxille and round it in the manner described by you. But the act 
could have had no other object than the collection of pollen; and the 
third moth, which was caught, had a fresh ball of pollen. 
** Above Manitou, where it is abundant, I studied Y. angustifolia in the 
first ten days of July, this year; —in fact was there for that purpose 
when your first letter came to St. Louis. Females (weathered) were 
invariably with pollen. One of them (No. 31) was seen to oviposit and 
pollinate twice, behaving precisely as in jilamentosa. I was not fortunate 
enough to see the collection of the pollen on this plant. The difficulty I 
have had in watching this part of the work no doubt comes from the fact 
that the moth can in a few minutes accumulate pollen enough for many 
pollinations, so that it is a relatively rare operation. My observation on 
jilamentosa (assuming her to have had pollen when thrusting the tenta- 
cles into the stigma in the first and third cases noted above) shows that 
she renews this load as it becomes exhausted. Males with very fresh 
wings were abundant in angustifolia flowers, and at the end of the bloom- 
ing period were much more quiescent than the females, for a male could 
be found head down after an interval of several hours at night when the 
flower was re-examined. One pair was seen in coitu in a flower. One 
was seen to be nervously exploring the base of a flower between the fila~ 
ments, but certainly found little or no nectar, and I have not seen another 
possible attempt at feeding. In angustifolia the stigmatic secretion is 
more commonly abundant than in filamentosa, but there is no greater flow 
