NOVEMBER. 17 



Such lines of colour converging towards that portion of 

 the flower where the nectar is secreted are very common 

 in insect-visited flowers, and have been called honey- 

 guides. They no doubt serve to direct insects to the 

 little recesses in which the sweets they look for lie 

 hidden, for it must be remembered that such insects as 

 bees and wasps are guided more by sight than any 

 other sense. Two white filaments stand up from the 

 base of the corolla, each ending in a dark-coloured 

 anther, from which a little pale whitish pollen is dis- 

 charged. Projecting away in front of them stands the 

 single style, with its minute brush-like stigma, but this 

 seems gradually to stand up straighter, and so come 

 nearer the anther cells. There seems no reason why the 

 pollen should not find its way directly on to its own 

 stigma, supposing some insect did not visit the flower 

 and scatter other pollen on it. And if it does not do 

 so while the flower stands open, it is almost certain to 

 be left on it when the corolla drops, for in doing so it 

 pulls the two stamens off with it, and these very fre- 

 quently smudge the stigma as they fall. 



In the flower I am looking at now is a small active insect 

 a Thrips, but neither its smallness nor its activity will 

 enable it to reach the nectar, of which apparently only a 

 very minute quantity is found at or near the base of the 

 corolla. For immediately above the base numerous rigid 

 hairs protrude towards the centre of the flower, forming a 

 network easily enough thrust aside or pierced by the trunk 

 of a bee, but quite firm enough to exclude the small insects 

 which would only rob the flower without bringing about 

 cross-fertilisation . 



Even while looking at this flower a breath of wind shook 

 it and the little blossom rolled off, the second which has 

 fallen to-day from the same branch, and it is not yet noon. 

 The very short-lived character of this flower, which it 

 shares with many others equally brilliantly coloured, is 

 partly the price it pays for being so showy ; but it is no 

 doubt also a secondary character which it has developed 

 along with its faculty of becoming self -fertilised. For it is 



