PART IL. 
THE INSECTS wHIcH Visit FLOWERS. 
Our native flowers are visited by examples of all the main 
divisions of insects; but these divisions differ greatly in regard 
to the number of their anthophilous species, the extent to which 
these restrict themselves to flowers for their food, their relative 
importance in fertilisation, and their special adaptations for the 
work. And though, as a general rule, the degree to which a group 
of insects is adapted structurally for a floral diet is proportional to 
their importance as fertilisers, this does not hold good always. In 
the following sketch, our insect-groups are arranged according to 
their progressive adaptations for obtaining food in flowers. 
Orthoptera and Neuroptera. 
These groups contain, at least among our native species, no 
form which is habitually anthophilous, or which shows any trace 
of adaptation for a floral diet. } 
Earwigs (Yorficula auricularia, L.) often creep in the 
daytime into flowers (Campanula, Papaver, Tropeolum, roses, 
pinks, peonies, etc.), whose softer parts they feed upon at night. 
Grasshoppers leap or fly on to various parts of plants, and so 
occasionally on to the flowers, to feed. 
I have seen a small dragon-fly (Agrion) settle repeatedly on 
flowers of Spirza, apparently only to sun itself. 
I have so often seen species of Hemerobius, Sialis lutaria, L., 
and Panorpa communis, L., wpon flowers of Umbelliferse, and 
* Delpino once found a small green grasshopper on flowers of Ophrys aranifera 
(172). Darwin states, on the authority of Mr. Swale, that in New Zealand several 
species of grasshoppers have been observed to fertilise papilionaceous plants (152, 
p. 451), This seems to me almost incredible. In South Brazil my brother Fritz Miller 
1as fuund a Pscudomops, probably P, laticornis (Perty), common on flowers. 
