The Busy Bee. 191 



The bees had to be consulted, for if they were to mix 

 ap rose-pollen : and honeysuckle pollen and the indis- 

 criminate mixture of the dust of all plants, it would never 

 do in the round world. There must have been some 

 kind of a general convention wherein it was agreed that 

 ' a community of interest ' required that the flowers 

 should, for their part, keep out all creeping bugs as much 

 as possible by making their blossom-stalks gummy and 

 covered with stickers and fuzz, 'or else smooth and so 

 dingle-clangly that creepers would fall off, while the bees 

 for their part contracted to visit only honeysuckles on 

 one trip, only white clover on another trip, only loose- 

 strife on another trip, and so on. The red clover, cater- 

 ing strictly to the bumble-bee trade, changed its blos- 

 som so that no other insect could get in. Other plants 

 have quit growing pollen in the stamens that do not touch 

 the bee on the right place to rub off on the raw spot in 

 another blossom, and still others are male at one time and 

 female at another, so as to make sure that there will be 

 no scandal of marriages within the forbidden degrees. 



The boy's definition of the bee as " the bird that gives 

 honey and stings " is hardly complete. It is more to us 

 than that. Take that knurly apple with the shrunken 

 place in its side. Cut it crosswise, and you will see that 

 the deep dimple marks the place where a seed has failed 

 to grow. \Yhat does that mean? That the bee made 

 only four visits to the apple-blossom instead of five. No- 

 tice that green spot in the strawberry. \Yhen the bee 

 plumped down on the flower, with its stomach pivoting 

 on the round mound in the middle, turning itself to suck 

 the honey out of the little pits at the base of the mound, 



* Bee=; do not get honey from the wild rose, as a matter of fact, but 

 I had to have some kind of a popular illustration, and since the rose is 

 the best-known flower, it did as well as any. 



