HORSE-TAILS 221 



ment by virtue of which the bee paints its own 

 back with pollen just where the next stigma 

 needs it ; the box of the toad-flax that only the 

 humble-bee can open ; the spring paint-brush of 

 the pea, the pollen pistol of the broom, the 

 gummed pollen mass of the orchid, and a thousand 

 other contrivances. 



Each advance has needed a new instinctive 

 intelligence and new adaptations on the part of 

 bee or butterfly, and with them has gone an 

 increased buoyancy of life that has made the 

 flower insects more beautiful, more industrious 

 and more interesting in the details of their life. 

 The flowers that the bees farm, the flowers that 

 have made the bees, have won from such as the 

 horse-tails all the best soils of the earth. They 

 oust them daily from further fields, drive them 

 off the mud, through the shallow water where the 

 hemp agrimony holds sway, even out of the deep 

 water where the water-buttercup drives its trade 

 with insects from the mainland. The horse-tails 

 win the water to mud, others win the mud to dry 

 land, then come the flowers covering the place 

 where the pond was, and lo ! the pioneers, the 

 aristocrats of the coal measures, have disappeared. 



