69 



Red Clover. Darwin carried out some interesting experiments regarding the 

 fertilization of red clover. He says, " One hundred flower heads on plants pro- 

 tected by a net did not produce a single seed, while a hundred heads on plants 

 growing outside, which were visited by bees, yielded sixty-eight grains of seeds." 



Hermann Mdller says the honey bee " usually visits the red clover only for its 

 honey, which its proboscis is not able to reach in a legitimate manner, yet now 

 and then I have seen hundreds of honey bees in a patch of red clover, all busy 

 collecting pollen." He records thirty-nine kinds of insect visitors to red clover. 



Dr. L. H. Pammel and Charlotte M. King of the Iowa State Agricultural 

 College, Iowa Academy of Science (Contribution 47, Botanical Department 

 1912) discuss the poUination of Clover. As a result of observations and experi- 

 ments carried on at Ames for several years they conclude that red clover is fertilized 

 through the agency of bees. They found no evidence in favor of the theory that 

 clover is fertilized before the flowers open. Moreover they maintain that, although 

 the number of blossoms in a large field to be fertilized is very great, the bee pollin- 

 ators " can accomplish in the season an important part toward the cross-pollination 

 of the field of clover blossoms." Experiments conducted in the field showed that 

 blossoms protected from bee visits set practically no seeds. 



White Clover. Darwin experimented with white clover and showed conclu- 

 sively that cross-pollination is necessary. Twenty protected heads were compared 

 with ten unprotected, the result being that the former yielded a single aborted seed 

 while the latter, which was \isited by bees yielded 2290 seeds. 



Alfalfa or Lucerne. Several investigators have shown conclusively by 

 experimentation that insects are necessary to fertilize the blossoms of Alfalfa. 

 Burkill and Urban, Kirchner and Fruwirth, and Roberts and Freeman have proved 

 that seed production is prevented almost entirely when insects are excluded from 

 the blossoms.— (Bui. 151 Kansas Agric. Exp. St., 1907.) 



Dr. H. J. Webber of "Cornell University, in a recent letter dated Dec. 7th on 

 the effect of bumble bees in the production of clover, says, " I know of no recent 

 experiments on this subject which have been published, but I do know of several 

 experiments which have been carried out in different parts of the country which 

 uphold Darwin's view point of the action of bumble bees. I can hardly understand 

 how Garton Brothers could have been mistaken in their conclusions, but the fact 

 is that of experiments carried on by scientific men I know of none which uphold 

 the Carton's view point.. Mr. A. D. Shamel, who was one of my assistants while 

 I was in Washington, D.C., made a number of experiments with red and white 

 clover, by enclosing the flowers in bags, thus preventing the access of bees, and in 

 all cases where the flowers were bagged scarcely ever was a seed set, due without 



