224 EYE SPY 
" All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers 
The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers, 
Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try 
With pins. They'll worry yourn so, boys, bime-by." 
Those " shrinkin' hearts " of the barberry blos- 
som, so long the wonder and amusement of chil- 
dren, including many children of adult growth, 
have, so far as I know, herein found their first and 
only historian historian, but not interpreter. For 
Hosea Biglow, nor his literary parent, James Rus- 
sell Lowell, never dreamed of the significance of 
this strange spectacle in the shrinkin' hearts of 
the barberry bloom when surprised with the point 
of a pin. 
But the bee can tell us all about it. He has 
known this singular trick in the barberry for 
ages, and kept the secret all to himself. Only 
comparatively recently (1859 or thereabouts) did 
the secret leak out, when Darwin, by the previous 
hints of several other philosophers, discovered the 
key which unlocked the mystery of this as well 
as thousands of other similar riddles among the 
flowers. 
These strange " manners " of the blossoms had 
then a deep vital principle at their base. They 
had not always been thus, but had gradually, 
through long ages of time, changed and modi- 
fied their shapes, colors, odors, nectar, and their 
manners for one purpose to insure their pollen 
