WHAT GOES ON IN THE APPLE BLOSSOMS 215 



the little halictus and the honey-bee, settling upon the 

 stamens, spreads them with her feet and pushes head down- 

 ward between until her not very long proboscis reaches the 

 nectar in the cup below. Bees are the most important pollen 

 distributors for apple blossoms: the larger ones seek both 

 nectar and pollen; the lesser ones, pollen only. Bees go 

 about the work in a brisk business-like way, passing rapidly 

 and directly from flower to flower, visiting many in rapid 

 succession and gleaning their food products thoroly. They 

 are little disturbed by a person quietly watching them. 



Perhaps the possession 

 of a sting may have 

 something to do with 

 this assurance of man- 

 ner. 



At any rate, the sting- 

 less visitors of the apple 

 blossoms, true flies and 

 butterflies, behave very 

 differently. They flit 



FIG. 84. A syrphus fly (Syrphus americanus, i -, , 



after Metcaif). about nervously, mak- 



ing circuitous flights 



between visits, and manifesting great wariness. A hand- 

 some banded syrphus-fly (fig. 84) settles lightly upon the 

 stamens and laps up a little pollen with his proboscis and 

 is away again, being gone before one has discovered that 

 he. is taking flight. A pretty nimble bee-fly darts up to a 

 flower, makes a thrust or two at the nectar-cup with its 

 exceedingly slender proboscis, and is away again. A fine 

 butterfly soars overhead, and finally settles upon a flower 

 cluster as if by accident, and sits there languidly dipping 

 the tip of his uncoiled proboscis into such nectar cups as 

 are in reach. Having greater length of proboscis than the 

 apple flower demands, he swings it around like a dipping- 

 crane. But he also darts away at the passing of a shadow. 



