156 Miscellaneous. 



the drying flowers made no more than the ordinary effort of bees 

 with fresh flowers. It was difficult to understand why in the same 

 variety of insect each should have its own line of procedure. If 

 it should be suggested that bees could profit by experience, and 

 that those which confined themselves to the freshly opened flowers 

 were young bees that had yet much to learn, there still remains the 

 tact that they did not profit by the experience of the older bees. 

 Sometimes almost side by side it might be supposed that any creature 

 that could profit by experience would want to know what the one 

 picking at a dried flower had found. 



The relation between insects and flowers obtrudes itself here. 

 Many plants, as I have placed on record, shed their pollen and cover 

 the stigma before the opening of the corolla. Whether the stigma is 

 in receptive condition or not, the pollen remains there till it is, and 

 we may regard all such as l ' arranged for self-fertilization," if, 

 indeed, there is any such special arrangement in the vegetable world 

 wholly with this view, or with the special view of cross-fertilization. 

 But in this honeysuckle the anther-sacs burst immediately on expan- 

 sion, and the anthers are in such close position to the stigma that it 

 can scarcely do aught but receive its own-pollen. All the flowers 

 examined seemed to have the stigmas completely covered with 

 pollen, and, I feel pretty sure, with own-pollen. My plants are, 

 however, infertile, rarely a few berries mature. I should refer this 

 to propagation from an infertile plant, as we frequently find to occur 

 in all classes of ligneous plants, which fruit neither with own-pollen 

 nor foreign pollen, rather than to any want of ability in own-pollen 

 to produce fertilization as an abstract principle, as would be assumed 

 by some. 



There still remains to be discussed why all this large amount of 

 nectar should be secreted by the flower with no apparent benefit to 

 itself in any conceivable way. But it is not safe to say that, because 

 we cannot see that any benefit results in relation to the visits of 

 insects, it is of no value in some as yet undiscovered operation in the 

 economy of nature. For aught we know it may be an excretion 

 rather than a secretion, which it may be as much an advantage to 

 get rid of when of no further use to the plaut, as it is an advantage 

 to get rid of the corolla itself. 



A very curious circumstance in connexion with these observations 

 was the discovery that each of these two forms of the Lonicera 

 japonica have different times of the day for the opening of its 

 'blossoms. The expansion, as in so many points of growth, is 

 rhythmic, and not a c jntinuous effort. In the form known as Loni- 

 cera fiexuosa the lobes of the corolla parted, so as to admit of the 

 protrusion of the stamens, at 2 p.m. Further efforts at expansion 

 rested till 4 p.m., when the act was resumed and completed. L. bra- 

 chypoda commenced opening at 5 p.m., and completed the opening 

 by 7 p.m. . . 



There is no reason why variation may not occur in the behaviour 

 of plants as well as in the parts of their structure ; but it is difficult 

 to conceive of any physiological value in these variations from any 

 point of view in the economy of plant-life. — Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. 

 Philad. 1894, pp. 169-171. 



