162 ELEMENTS OF BOTANY. 
them to attract insect-visitors, and to give pollen to the latter 
and receive it from them. 
199. Pollen-Carrying Apparatus of Insects..— Ants and 
many beetles which visit flowers have smooth bodies, to which 
little pollen adheres, so that their visits are often of little 
value to the flower, but many beetles, all butterflies and moths 
and most bees have bodies roughened with scales or hairs so 
as to hold a good deal of pollen entangled. In the common 
honey-bee (and in many other kinds) the greater part of the 
insect is hairy, and there are special collecting baskets, 
formed by bristle-like hairs, on the hind-legs, Fig. 144. It is 
easy to see the load of 
pollen’ accumulated in 
these baskets, after such 
a bee has visited several 
flowers. Of course the 
pollen which the bee 
packs in the baskets and 
carries off to the hive, to 
be stored for food, is of 
no use in fertilization. 
In fact such pollen is in 
one sense entirely wasted. 
Fig. 144. — Right Hind-Leg of a Honey-Bee. But since such bees a 
(Seen from behind and within.) have these collecting 
ti (below), the tibia seen from the outside, baskets are the most in- 
showing the collecting basket, formed of : ane 
ae dustrious visitors to flow- 
ers, they accomplish an 
immense share of the work of fertilization by means of the 
pollen-grains which stick to their hairy coats. 
200. Nectar and Nectaries. — Nectar is a sweet liquid 
which flowers secrete for the purpose of attracting insects. 
After partial digestion in the crop of the bee, nectar becomes 
1 See Miiller’s Fertilization of Flowers, Part II. 
