949 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
was not a bee to be seen, notwithstanding their fiery glow, whilst 
in the latter there was a sound as if a swarm of bees had taken 
possession of it.” 
Mr. Baker, of the Technological Museum, informed me that 
he observed a specimen of Panax sambucifolius swarming with 
bees, although it bears a small, very inconspicuous flower. A. 
fence divided it from an enclosure of brightly-coloured garden 
flowers, yet these were passed over unheeded. Why did the bees 
neglect the garden flowers? Because the yield of food was not 
equal to that in the Panax sambucifolius. In none of the cases 
T have named were the bees attracted by the colours, but by what 
they could get in the form of food. 
Many years ago, when in Cooma, I had a bed of turnips in 
flower that from daylight to dark were besieged by bees. Sud- 
denly the bees forsook them. I found the cause to be that a 
small paddock of lucerne near by had been permitted to flower, 
and the bees had gone thither. Were they attracted by the 
purple flowers? Not a bit of it. Lucerne, like other trefoils, 
produce an abundance of bee food, far more than any of the 
cruciforms, and the bees had gone where they could get the 
greatest quantity in the shortest space of time. In about twenty- 
four hours afterwards the lucerne was cut, and the bees returned 
to the turnips. 
Darwin says: “It would appear that either the taste or the 
odour of the nectary of certain flowers are unattractive to hive- 
bees or to humble-bees or to both, for there seems no reason why 
certain open flowers which secrete nectar are not visited by both. 
The small quantity of nectar secreted by some of these flowers 
can hardly be the cause of their neglect, as hive-bees search 
eagerly for the. minute drops on the glands of the leaves of the 
Prunus lawrocerasus.” The small quantity was the cause, as was 
the reason my bees left the turnips for the lucerne. 
Early one spring I saw bees eagerly working the flower-heads 
of couch-grass. We all know that the flower of the couch has 
not an attractive colour. The endemic or native flowers inter- 
mixed here and there with them were far more showy. Looking 
into my bees I found young larvee were plentiful ; pollen for bee- 
bread was needed. The endemic flowers were producing little or 
none, but on the couch-grass there was a fairly good supply, and 
this supply was the cause of their neglecting the brighter coloured 
blooms for the greenish-yellow flowers of the couch-grass. 
Watch a large bed of poppies of mixed colours. No one colour 
is neglected by the bees. They are as eager to forage in the 
white as in the red. Poppies are great pollen-producers. 
Again Darwin says: “ Bees repeatedly passed in a direct line 
from one variety to another of the same species, although they 
bore very differently-coloured flowers. I observed bees also flying 
——_ a 
