THE FLOWER AND THE BEE 293 



this acconnt popularly known as the pickerel- weed bee, its visits being 

 confined to Pontederia cordata of which pickerel-weed is the 

 popular name. Flowers visited by butterflies are commonl}^ red. and 

 it is curious that the butterflies themselves are often of the same 

 hue; the relations of the hawk-moths and flies with blossoms are 

 also discussed ; " conspicuous flowers pollinated by insects which do 

 not secrete nectar are called pollen-flowers," and to them a chapter is 

 devoted. There is an interesting table of the colours of North- 

 American flowers, from which it appears that " the green, white, and 

 yellow flowers number 3001, or three^fourths of the entire number, 

 while the red, purple, and blue amount to only 1019 " : of these 2972 

 are pollinated by insects or self-pollinated, while those pollinated by 

 wind, including a few pollinated by water, number 1048. The last 

 chapter on "Bees and Fruit-growing" is of practical value, contain- 

 ing as it does useful as well as interesting information. 



A word must be said as to the numerous illustrations, from photo- 

 graphs taken by the author : mostly of natural size, they stand out 

 from the black background with startling distinctness. The book 

 has an excellent index ; the style is here and there a little flamboyant, 

 but this will not lessen its attractiveness for the general reader, on 

 whose behalf technical terms have as far as possible been avoided. 



BOOK-NOTES, NEWS, etc. 



The death is announced at St. Ola, Orkney, on Aug. 20, at the age 



of sixty-six, of Magnus Spence, Fellow of the Educational Institute 

 of Scotland, for many 3^ ears headmaster at Deerness. He was born in 

 the parish of Birsay, 1 Jan. 1853, and was an able representative of 

 the large class of devotees of the natural sciences who keep the low^er 

 lights burning in outlying districts, and whose value is to be estimated 

 not so much in their actual output of publications, as in the stimulus and 

 example they afford to their colleagues and succeeding generations of 

 pupils. In addition to his educational duties Spence's interests lay in 

 the direction of the botany, meteorology, and geology of his districts 

 Although over age for retirement he continued school-work during 

 the pressure of the War, and as Keeper of the Orkney Meteorological 

 Observatory at Deerness he w^as responsible during the whole pei-iod 

 for Government records. His published w^ork included a Flora Orca- 

 densis (1914) which was noticed in this Journal for that year (p. 222), 

 a list of the local flora implying many years of careful work and 

 observation ; but he is perhaps better known to recent readers of the 

 Journal for his contributions to the algology of Orkney ( Journ. Bot.. 

 1918, 281, 337). Although Spence onl}" took to marine algse in later 

 years his work showed interest in economic and ecological problems,, 

 and it was hoped that in retirement he might have been spared to. 

 continue the work of Pollexsen (as the name usualh^ written " Pollex- 

 fen " should be spelt) and Clouston, and establish the marine flora of 

 Orkney, at the more northern limit of the British area, on a sound 

 basis. 



Mb. R. S. Adamson and Miss Alison Crabtree publish in the- 

 Memoirs of the Manclicstcr Litfrari/ and P/ifIoiioj)/u'cal Socief/f 



