COLOR IN FLOWERING PLANTS. 75 



seeing a gradual depopulation of the hive, set about warding off 

 the impending ill by superseding their mother and queen — that 

 is, by rearing a young queen to take her place. In the case just 

 noted the object was all right and the means to attain it all right, 

 but, like ourselves sometimes, they were doing their work at the 

 wrong time. 



A normal colony of bees consists of one queen, some drones — 

 more or less — and from 30,000 to 50,000 workers. The queen is the 

 mother of the whole family — of the workers, the drones, and even 

 her rivals, the young queens, which are to take her place in the 

 hive, and they sometimes dispatch her in superseding her. The 

 workers, as their name implies, do all the work of gathering 

 honey, rearing brood, etc. The drones, like the drones in the hu- 

 man hive, do next to nothing, but do it well, with this difference, 

 that the human drone fails to do well what little he does do. 



The conclusion I have reached is -this: the horse, the cow, the 

 dog, the honey-bee, and other animals have a certain degree of 

 reason and intelligence as well as instinct, and also have, some 

 of them, strong social and domestic feelings, and are therefore 

 entitled to greater consideration and kinder treatment at the 

 hands of man than they sometimes get. I have also come to the 

 conclusion, viewing the multitude of mistakes and follies of the 

 higher animal, man, that his superior reason and more exalted 

 faculties are not on the whole turned to as good account as the 

 inferior reason and faculties of the so-called " brute beasts." 



COLOR IN FLOWERING PLANTS. 



By ALICE CASTER. 



COLOR is as omnipresent as light. Life, the greatest of artists, 

 uses the most common materials to produce masterpieces 

 which sunset clouds can not surpass. The possibilities of almost 

 infinite color variation are present in every green plant, even in 

 its roots and stems. Appropriate conditions only are needed to 

 bring them out ; only power to help in the plant economy can in- 

 tensify and make them hereditary and permanent. There is little 

 doubt that by careful selection leaves would become as wonder- 

 fully variegated as flowers. Indeed, this has been done : some of 

 our cultivated maples — masters of chiaroscuro — " are positively 

 rainbow-dyed/' Bright-leaved birches, beeches, begonias, and 

 foliage plants are continually improving under man's directive 

 care. These do not appear under natural conditions in our climate, 

 probably because they are of little or no use. Still, there are 

 glorious tree-paintings in our autumn woods. The red of the 



