342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



piece of decaying meat. Moreover, certain insects show a preference 

 for certain special flowers over others. One may watch for hours the 

 visits paid by a bee or a butterfly to several dozens of one flower, say 

 a purple lamium, in succession, passing by unnoticed the white or yel- 

 low blossoms which intervene between them. Fritz Miiller mentions 

 an interesting case of a lantana, which is yellow on the first day, 

 orange on the second, and purple on the third. " This plant," he says, 

 " is visited by various butterflies. As far as I have seen, the purple 

 blossoms are never touched. Some species inserted their probosces 

 both into yellow and into orange flowers ; others, as far as I have 

 observed, exclusively into the yellow flowers of the first day." Mr. 

 T. D. Lilly, an American naturalist, observed that the colored petu- 

 nias and morning-glories in his garden were torn to pieces by bees 

 and butterflies in getting at the honey, while the white or pale ones 

 were never visited. These are only a few sample cases out of hun- 

 dreds, in which various observers have noted the preference shown by 

 insects for blossoms of a special color. 



Again, we may ask. Do different species of insects show different 

 degrees of aesthetic taste ? The late Dr. Hermann Miiller, who spe- 

 cially devoted himself to the relations between insects and flowers, 

 showed most conclusively that they do. The butterflies, which are at 

 once the most locomotive and most beautiful of their class, appear to 

 require larger masses of color for their attraction than any other 

 group ; and the flowers which depend upon them for fertilization are, 

 in consequence, exceptionally large and brilliant. Miiller attributes 

 to this cause the well-known beauty of Alpine flowers, because bees 

 and flies are comparatively rare among the higher Alps, while butter- 

 flies, which rise to greater elevations in the air, are comparatively 

 common ; and he has shown that, in many cases, where a lowland 

 flower is adapted for fertilization by bees, and has a small or inconspicu- 

 ous blossom, its Alpine congener has been modified so as to be suited 

 for fertilization by butterflies, and has, therefore, brilliant bunches of 

 crimson or purple blossoms. In his last work, he shows that, while 

 bees form as many as seventy-five per cent of the insects visiting the 

 beautiful and attractive composites, they form only fourteen per cent 

 of those which visit the plain green and white umbellates, like the 

 wild-carrot and fool's-parsley. Butterflies frequently visit the com- 

 posites, but almost never the umbellates, which last depend mainly 

 upon the smaller flies and other like insects. Of two small hedge- 

 flowers ( Galium mollugo and G. verum), Miiller notes that they agree 

 closely in other points, but the first is white, while the second is yel- 

 low, which, he says, renders it more attractive to small beetles. Of 

 certain other flowers, which lay themselves out to attract wasps, Miiller 

 quaintly observes that they are obviously adapted "to a less festheti- 

 cally cultivated circle of acquaintances." So that the close studies of 

 this accurate and painstaking naturalist led him to the conclusion that 



