Mar. 2, 1908.] Agricultural Gazette of N.S. W. 215 



in tbe.se latter times the bees at least have been sutHciently educated to go 

 without leading strings, and have kicked over the traces, and now work 

 according to their own sweet will, or a Higher One. 



Darwin himself is not quite sure that the colours and markings of flowers 

 in every case are for the sole purpose of attracting bees. 



I have before remarked that bees do not work indiscriminately on every 

 species of flower that comes to hand, notwithstanding they are all honey- 

 producers ; but one peregrination is confined to collecting from one species, 

 and in the next ramble they may select another, and so on. Whatever 

 species of flower they may select to gather from, it is not the colour of the 

 bloom that is the attraction. In watching bees at work on a bed of poppies, 

 the brightly-coloured flowers are not chosen in preference to white. Any 

 colour in the bed is as attractive as that of any other. 



" Bees repeatedly passed in a direct line from one variety to another of 

 the same species, although they bore very difterently-coloured flowers. I 

 observed also hees flying in a straight line from one clump of yellow-flowered 

 (Eathera to every clump of the same plant in the garden without turning an 

 inch from their course to plants of Esehocholtzia, and others with yellow 

 flowers, which lay only a foot or two on either side. In these cases the bees 

 knew the position of each plant in the garden .... so that they 

 were guided by experience and memory."'* Tlie experience they had gained 

 was that (Enthera contained more food than Eschoclioltzia, and Nature had 

 taught them that it would be impossible to im|)regnate the ovaries of the 

 one with the pollen of the other. 



What is oar Australian experience as it regards the colour of flowers 

 that are chiefly visited bv bees ? There is no denying that some of our 

 endemic flowers are as brightly coloured as the exotic ; and, before the 

 introduction of foreign plants and the heQ (Apis meWjira), t\\e cliief hone) - 

 gathering social insect was the little native bee {Triyona carbonaria), one 

 of the cliief insect fertilisers in Australia. The chief honey-yielding plants 

 in these States are the Piltospormn and the tea-tree [Leptospermuyn family). 

 The colour of the native flowers named are whitish, with a few exceptions. 

 The chief exotics that have been introduced are fruit-bearing and ornamental 

 flowering plants, which nearly in all cases bear brightly-coloured flowers or 

 blossoms. The exotic, white, flowering fruit-trees in the spring-time are very 

 conspicuous b}^ the multiplicity of the blooms they bear ; yet our little native 

 bee? now as readily find the nectary in them as our introduced bees, and 

 they cannot have had ages of experience to guide them. 



On the other hand, it is very singular that the hive-bee, on its introduction 

 into Australia, and V)eforp it had been sufliciently colonised, should forsake 

 the highly-coloured garden flowers of the Old Woi Id that were introduced 

 here at about the same time as the bee. These highly-coloured flowers and 

 the hive-bee. as far as Australia is concerned, are coeval. Untold genera- 

 tions of them had learned to work these bloom=, we are informed, and their 



* Darwin in " Cross and Self Fertilisation of Plants. ' 



