136 Plants and theu' Ways in South Africa 



a region where our next-door neighbours were over the hill 

 two miles away. So I sat on the stoep and lazily condemned 

 Prof. Henslow's theory. A single fact, I severely reminded 

 my reluctant fancy, was enough to upset any hypothesis. 

 While I sat, mentally active but bodily motionless, there 

 flashed quite close to me one of those animated streaks of 

 God's brightest colours that we call sugar-birds — as brilliant 

 as America's intensest humming-bird, only more of it. I was 

 delighted, for my nearness of sight prevents much acquaintance 

 with wild birds. This little thing evidently took me to be 

 part of the stoep furniture, and by absolute stillness I encouraged 

 the delusion. From his coign of vantage he made a brief 

 survey of the garden, with a determination of breakfast written 

 on every feather of him. But breakfast on what? In the 

 West, Nature supplies them abundantly with Proteas, but of 

 this order I think there is only a little Leucospermum growing 

 in the Transkei. What was it to be ? Honeysuckle, or Tecoma 

 capensis 1 Habemus utrtimque as Horace said of certain 

 human nectars. Birdie did not leave me long in doubt. 

 Down he swooped on the spikes of Gladiolus — there were 

 some twenty of them— and he sampled every open flower 

 on every spike. And he attacked them at the back, clinging 

 to the column of the spike and working his way downwards 

 from side to side so as to miss nothing. His curved beak 

 entered the flower just where the lobes part and scraped down 

 the tube till it found the honey. Now, if you look at the inside 

 of the Gladiohis, you will find that the purple mark goes all 

 the way down the path of the beak ; and in some of the 

 flowers this purple path is not visible from without, but only 

 the spot at the lobe-parting. How about the theory now? 

 Shall we say the flower spontaneously advertises in front for 

 insects and at the back for birds? Or did it just blush at 

 being so tickled? 



Nay, more, why are all the blooms on only one side of that 

 spike ? Don't tell me they want to face the light. In my 

 .garden they face to all points of the compass. Can it be that, 

 just as the weight of insects enlarges the lip of Lahiatce and 

 Acanthacece^ so .the push of the sugar-.bird .has driven all. the 



