174 BRITISH PLANTS 
intelligence, and skill. Humble-bee flowers: larkspur, 
deadly nightshade, foxglove, white clover; hive - bee: 
Viola canina ; short-tongued bees : mignonette. 
2. Butterflies and Moths (Lepidoptera).—Most of these 
insects are long-tongued, and some of them have tongues 
longer than any bee. One of the hawk-moths has a 
tongue which, when fully extended, is over a foot in 
length. These insects do not enter the flower, but hover 
over it, and often without touching the flower at all, 
shoot out their tongues into it for the honey. They are 
not strong insects, and are unable to move aside the 
heavy structures which bees can, nor can they bite holes 
through the tissues. Butterflies generally fly by day, 
and the flowers they visit are generally red or blue. Many 
moths fly at night, and the flowers they visit are white 
or bright yellow, the only colours visible at a distance in 
the dim light of the evening. Flowers pollinated by 
night-flying moths are also strongly scented, and many 
of them only open in the evening when the moths are 
about —e.g., tobacco- plant, evening- primrose, Silene 
nutans. The evening-lychnis (Lychnis vespertina) is white, 
and opens between 6 p.m. and 9 a.m.; the day-lychnis 
(L. diurna) is a bee-flower, red in colour, open all day, 
and closed at night. It has a shorter tube than the night- 
blooming moth-flower. The apple is white, strongly 
scented at night, and pollinated chiefly by moths. 
3. Wasps.—One or two flowers in the British flora are 
visited exclusively by wasps. One is the figwort (Scro- 
phularia), with small, dull-purple, open flowers, having a 
rather disagreeable smell. On a warm sunny day an 
enormous number of wasps may be seen hovering about 
these flowers. Wasps are not very efficient agents of 
pollination, because, unlike bees, they do not, as a rule, 
confine their visits to the same species of flower for any 
length of time. 
4. Small Insects (e.g., flies, beetles, bugs, etc.).—The 
flowers visited by these insects are usually small and 
open, and the honey, even if slightly concealed, is easily 
attainable. They are stupid creatures, and enter at 
random any flower they meet. A few flowers, however, 
are specially adapted for fly-pollination. They have a 
disagreeable odour, resembling that of carrion, but very 
pleasant to flies. The flowers are so constructed that 
