FERTILIZATION OF SPRING FLOWERS ON THE YORKSHIRE COAST. 93 



buds of late plants may live through the cold months, and come 

 into blossom in the spring.* 



Two origins then are conceivable for the vernal flora,! as also 

 two for the autumnal. We may suppose the summer, by the earlier 

 development of some flowers, yielding up — crowding out — some of 

 its abundant blossoms to the spring months, and we may suppose 

 some belated autumnal emigrating to the spring flora. The evidence 

 for the first hypothesis is conclusive, that for the second insufficient. 

 In any case the work most necessary at present is the estimating of 

 the advantage to be gained by such a migration. 



The cost to most plants is not inconsiderable ; to make the order 

 of the production of the important organs — flower, fruit, leaves, or 

 even flower, leaves, fruit, instead of leaves, flower, fruit, is to make 

 an alteration of no small moment, in so much as the leaves are the 

 workshops whence the food-supply is drawn, and there must needs 

 be a store laid by before the drain comes upon the production of 

 pollen, honey, scent, the bright parts of the flower, and, greatest of 

 all, the feeding of the growing seed. To risk severe weather may 

 not merely mean to risk the destruction by frost of tender growing 

 seeds, so often the case in our fruit trees, or to risk the scarcity of 

 insect visits, but, if the suggestion made later in the case of 

 Capsdla be correct, it means sometimes the destruction of stamens, 

 so that fertilization becomes an impossibility. These are the con- 

 siderations which we must put into the scales and attempt to 

 balance against one another ; and these are the ideas which sug- 

 gested the observations here recorded. To answer the problem is 

 impossible. I shall merely be able to add a little which will ulti- 

 mately help towards its solution. 



The Insect-visitors. 



There is never throughout the whole cycle of the year a season 

 absolutely insectless, and the flowers which may be seen flowering 

 about Christmas get occasional visitors. :[ Yet in the winter months 

 flower-visiting insects are so scarce that these visits are extremely 

 few. With the warm days at the beginning of March hybernatiug 

 insects come out — the hive-bees to begin collecting honey and pollen, 

 fertilized female humble-bees to nest and make their store of food for 

 their grubs; the mid-tongued bees, Andrena, etc., appear in abun- 

 dance; certain early Syrphidse, such as ]\Ielanostoma quadrimacula- 

 tum, appear on the wing, and others which have hybernated reappear ; 

 a few beetles may be seen; but more important still are the short- 

 tonguedfliesof the genera Lucilia, Calliphora.Scatophaga, Sepsis, and 



* Instances of this came to my notice during the course of these observa- 

 tions; Kiii-a TetraUx flowered near Scarborough, on the moors, on March 8th, 

 and Scahidsa ariensi.^ on tlie cUtfs on March i;Sth, IHUd. The stamens of the 

 latter were infertile (contabescent). 



t Cf. Foerste, " On the relations of certain fall to sprin-; blossoming plants," 

 But. Gazette, xvii. (1892), p. 1. 



I I have records of visits for January 'iud, 1890, of Apion ulicis Forst. (C) 

 andThripsto Ulex europans, and of Coelopa sp. (D) a.nAThn]ps to Bellis perennis. 



