152 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
repeated several times, first from one of the angles between the apices, then 
from another, and, as Prof. Wm. Trelease has shown, the tongue is used, 
in addition to the tentacles, to push the pollen down to the bottom of the 
tube. 
2d. I have made careful search the past summer, and have had my asso- 
ciates, Messrs. Howard, Pergande, and Lugger, assist in the search for 
honey-bees in or about the Yucca flowers in Washington. There were over 
200 stalks under observation, most of them of easy access on the grounds 
of the Department of Agriculture. Neither of the three gentlemen men- 
tioned detected any bees, but I succeeded on two occasions, and each time 
between 9 and 10 a. m., in finding a single bee flying about the flowers. In 
neither case did the bee make any attempt to enter, but in each it probed 
around the outer base of the flower in search for nectar, and soon left 
evidently without being able to get much. These facts I record, not in 
any way to cast discredit on Mr. Hulst's statement, but rather to show 
how very different from his own has been my experience in this direction, 
both in St. Louis and Washington. Not that I place much faith in the 
constancy of bees, which are known to be somewhat fickle in their tastes 
according to season or colony, a fact that maj- account for the difference in 
our experience, as may also the presumption that Apis mellifica is more 
abundant in Brooklyn than in Washington, or, again, the known fact that 
Tticca angustifolia is less scant in nectar than its filamentose congener. 
Be that as it may, our Apis has plainly, so far as observed, been after nec- 
tar, and has shown no disposition whatever to go near the stigma, and this 
fact is, as I have learned, corroborated by Professors Cook and Beal, of the 
Michigan State Agricultural College, where, for the first time this year, 
they have observed honey-bees about the Yucca flowers. It is further cor- 
roborated by experiment which I made this summer of confining bees to 
the flowers within a gauze enclosure. 
As for pollination by other insects, Chauliognathus pennsylvanicus, 
which feeds on both pollen and the nectar, is the most common species 
found in the flowers, and by virtue of these habits and its peculiarly modi- 
fied mouth-parts, is most to be suspected ; yet I have carefully watched it 
for years, only to be convinced that it never either assists or competes with 
Pronuba in the act of pollination. 
3d. This argument has already been disposed of in my previous commu- 
nication (vol. ii, p. 238, summary iv), and it is only necessary to add, that 
until Mr. Hulst is more exact, and will tell us what proportion of his pods 
containing no larvae also showed no signs of oviposition (t. e., how many 
were perfect without sign of puncture or constriction or irregularity about 
the middle), we shall not even know how many the little moth pollinized 
without getting a chance to perform the other (to her) important act. 
4th. This is contrary to my own experience in Europe, and to all au- 
thoritative record familiar to me, and until Mr. Hulst gives us his authority 
and the evidence, it were shere waste of time to further discuss the point. 
I have thus disposed of all the valid arguments brought forward by Mr. 
