selves in pure white, the color most conspicuous in all kinds 

 of weather and in all kinds of light. 



Bees Do Not Inhabit North Woods. 



In one respect the naturalist might be disappointed. The 

 insect guests of these delicate white flowers, are not, bees, 

 but flies and faking flies at that. In no other places have 

 I found mimicking flies so numerous and so early in the sea- 

 son. A few forest insects mimic bumble bees but most of 

 them have adopted the wasp pattern, which consists essen- 

 tially of black and yellow stripes. There are few wild bees 

 in these woods, where the air is often damp and cool, where 

 rains are frequent and copious and the summer season rather 

 short. It is not a good land for bees and in many regions no 

 escaped honey bees are found at all. So the flies have taken 

 the place of bees, but have adopted the color and markings 

 of bees and wasps which undoubtedly saves many a "flower 

 fly from the fangs of lurking spiders who are the dread of 

 all small unarmed insects, but who in turn live in mortal 

 terror of a host of formidably armed wasps, and shun any 

 insect that looks like a wasp, and wasps are not rare in the 

 North woods. 



Sermons of Beauty in These Flowers. 



In midsummer or autumn nearly all these flowers invite 

 the birds to dine on fruit or berries, blue, red or white, and 

 well have the birds repaid their hosts. These delicate flow- 

 ers that look as if they had no means of spreading even into 

 the next township, completed the journey around the globe 

 many thousand years before the intrepid Magellan started on 

 his historic journey. The delicate starflower, the little smilax, 

 the fragrant Linnaea and a host of North woods flowers and 

 shrubs, not only fringe trails, streams and lakes in the United 

 States and Canada, but they are equally at home in the for- 

 ests of Northern Europe and Asia. 



There are sermons and beautiful stories and mysteries in 

 the flowers that bloom along the northern trails and the most 

 beautiful thing about them is that the stories will never be 

 all told and the mysteries will never be all solved. 



24 



