QUEER FLOWERS. 18 1 



in it he can not disengage himself, and there perishes wretchedly, like 

 a hawk in a keeper's trap. 



These cases lead on naturally to certain other very queer flowers 

 which similarly take advantage of the stupidity of flies by actually 

 imprisoning them (without writ of habeas corpus) in a strong inner 

 chamber, until they have duly performed the penal servitude of fer- 

 tilization enjoined upon them by the inexorable blossom. The South 

 European birthwort, a very lurid-looking and fly-enticing flower, has a 

 sort of cornucopia-shaped tube, lined with long hairs, which all point 

 inward, and so allow small midges to creep down readily enough, after 

 the fashion of an eel-buck or lobster-pot. Sed revocare gradum, su- 

 perasque evadere ad auras — to get out again is the great difficulty. 

 Try as they will, the little prisoners can't crawl back upward against 

 the downward-pointing hairs. Accordingly, they are forced, by cir- 

 cumstances over which they have no control, to walk aimlessly up and 

 down their prison-yard, fertilizing the little knobby surface of the 

 seed-vessel with pollen brought from another flower. But, as soon as 

 the seeds are all impregnated, the stamens begin to shed their pollen, 

 and dust over the gnats with the copious powder. Then the hairs all 

 wither up, and the gnats, released from their lobster-pot prison, fly 

 away once more on the same fool's errand. Before doing so, however, 

 they make a good meal off the pollen that covers the floor, though they 

 still carry away a great many grains on their own wings and bodies. 

 One might imagine that, after a single experience of the sort, the 

 midges would have sense enough to avoid birthwort in future ; but 

 your midge has really no more intelligence than your human drunkard, 

 or gambler, or opium-eater. He flies straight off to the very next birth- 

 wort he see^, conveys to it the pollen from the last trap he visited, 

 and gets confined once more in the inner chamber, till the plant is pre- 

 pared to let him out again on ticket-of leave of short duration. Thus, 

 like an habitual criminal, he spends almost all his time in getting from 

 one jail into another. His confinement, however, is not solitary, but 

 is mitigated by congenial intercourse with the ladies and gentlemen of 

 his own kind. 



A very similar but much larger fly-cage is set by our own common ■ 

 wild arum, or cuckoo-pint. This familiar big spring flower exhales a. 

 disagreeable, fleshy odor, which, by its meat-like flavor, attracts a tiny 

 midge with beautiful iridescent wings and a very poetical name, 

 Psychoda. As in most other cases where flies are specially invited, 

 the color of the cuckoo-pint is usually a dull and somewhat livid pur- 

 ple. A palisade of hairs closes the neck of the funnel-shaped blossom, 

 and repeats the lobster-pot tactics of the entirely unconnected South 

 European birthwort. The little flies, entering by this narrow and 

 stockaded door, fertilize the future red berries with pollen brought 

 from their last prison, and are then rewarded for their pains by a tiny 

 drop of honey, which slowly oozes from the middle of each embryo 



