190 The Book of Bugs. 



bumble-bees insure seeds to red clover; red clover makes 

 good beef, and good beef makes big, strong men, who 

 extend and keep up the British Empire. Q. E. D. 



Our civilized roses, now that they are sure of being 

 perpetuated by slips and roots, have quit trying to raise 

 families and devote all their energy to looking pretty. 

 But the wild rose, that has to struggle for a living, is still 

 male and female. Like all other flowers, it grows a 

 fringe of little filaments that shed a fine dust. Inside 

 this ring of filaments are little upright spikes with raw 

 spots on their tops. If a grain of this dust or pollen gets 

 on a raw spot or stigma it wriggles down through the 

 spike into the knob below the flower and starts a seed to 

 growing. But flowers, as well as human beings, are 

 opposed to the marriage of close kin. The problem the 

 original rose had to solve was how to get pollen from one 

 plant to another. I can imagine the first rose scowling 

 and nibbling her under lip trying to think. 4 Let me 

 see," says she, " I might trust to the wind, like the pussy- 

 willow, but that's too chancy. I wonder if I could get 

 some of these flying insects to carry a little pollen for me, 

 now and then. It's so handy for them to get around. 

 They're not stuck in one place all the time. I'd have to 

 pay 'em for it, I suppose. They like sweets. I'll set out 

 some honey around the bases of my pollen-bearing fila- 

 ments. But how'll they know I've honey for them? I'll 

 advertise. Red's an attractive color. So's yellow. You 

 know what the poet says : 



' Red and yellow, 

 Catch a fellow." 



; I'll change some of these outside stamens to petals 

 and dye them red or yellow. Then, to call their further 

 attention, I'll sprinkle perfume." 



