INSECT FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS. 595 



number of medical schools which require some sort of preliminary ex- 

 amination for admission is also increasing. A great deal is expected 

 of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical College (which are hand- 

 somely endowed) when they shall be in operation. Several chairs have 

 been endowed in the Medical College of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania. Mr. Vanderbilt's recent magnificent gift was for a lot and 

 building and not for endowment, but the donor set the excellent ex- 

 ample of aiding an already tried institution instead of launching a new 

 one among the many which are at present struggling to float. The 

 work accomplished in the past ten years by physicians themselves 

 through their various societies and organizations in exposing quackery, 

 injurious patent medicines, malpractice, and bargaining in diplomas for 

 which no study has ever been expended, has revealed and corrected an 

 enormous amount of abuse and crime, notwithstanding the very tardy 

 legal and popular support which has attended these efforts. Our great 

 need is a little more system and concentration of energy, or a diversion 

 of some of the wide-spread public interest in general medical topics 

 toward securing and demanding the most thorough medical education 

 for every one who seeks to become a physician. This will be of incal- 

 culable service to the entire country ; and endowments, whether by 

 State legislation or private bequests and subscriptions, combined with 

 State or national supervision of licenses to practice, will so far advance 

 the thoroughness of work at home by making it independent of large 

 or small classes of students, that we may hope before long to invite 

 foreign students to learn from us how to take the lead in medical 

 education. 







INSECT FEKTILIZATKM OF FLOWEKS * 



By Dr. W. J. BEHRENS. 



OF insects the Coleoptera, the Lepidoptera, the Diptera, and the 

 Hymenoptera are the orders most concerned in the fertilization 

 of flowers. More rarely, fertilization is effected by one or other spe- 

 cies of Hemiptera, Neuroptera, and Orthoptera, but these are not of 

 sufficient importance to demand further attention here. We shall 

 therefore confine our remarks to the orders constituting the former 

 group, and consider the various physical peculiarities by which insects 

 belonging to them are enabled to effect the end in question. Such 

 peculiarities chiefly take the form of special structures (invariably con- 

 fined to the head), by means of which the insects are enabled to reach 

 and abstract the honey contained in the flower. We shall also have to 

 consider the organs concerned in the transport of the pollen. 



* From " Text-Book of General Botany," by Dr. W. J. Behrens, of Gottiugen. Trans- 

 lation from the second German edition. Revised by Patrick Geddes, F. R. S. E. Edinburgh : 

 Young J. Pentland, 1885. 



