196 MYSTERIES OF THE FLOWERS 



planation is that these butterflies seek and prefer 

 a mate with brightly coloured wings, and the same 

 colour-sense leads him to visit, by preference, flow- 

 ers which are equally resplendent. Our colour 

 plates of the flame azalea and the butterfly-weed 

 were painted to show two of our butterflies visiting 

 favourite flowers. 



INSECTS AND THEIR FAVOURITE COLOURS 



If insects are necessary to the flowers, the flowers 

 are no less essential to the insects, for the pollen 

 they shed and the nectar they secrete are the normal 

 food for most beetles, bees, moths and butterflies. 

 There was a time in past ages when no flowers 

 bloomed and, also, no bees nor butterflies were on 

 the wing, and, strange to say, when the former ap- 

 peared the latter also came into existence. Such 

 is the record written in the rocks, and deciphered 

 by scientists wise in those hidden mysteries. Be- 

 ginning with flowers of simple forms and perhaps 

 colourless and scentless, the scientists have traced 

 a progression upward through stages of growing 

 complexity and increasing opulence, and, parallel 

 with the flowers, they have traced an upward scale 

 of insect-life from blundering beetles, dull in colour 

 as in intelligence, through many forms ending with 

 the frail butterflies, sensitive and resplendent. 



