The Strange Story of the Flowers 



to plants by engaging the wind as their match- 

 maker — as every summer shows us in its pollen- 

 laden air, the oaks, the pines, the cottonwoods, 

 and a host of other plants commit to the breeze 

 the winged atoms charged with the continuance 

 of their kind. Nevertheless, long as the wind 

 has been employed at this work, it has not yet 

 learned to do it well; nearly all the pollen en- 

 trusted to it is wasted, and this while its pro- 

 duction draws severely upon the strength of a 

 plant. As good fortune will have it, a 

 many flowers close to their pollen yield an ample 

 supply of nectar: a food esteemed delicious by 

 the whole round of insects, winged and wing- 

 less. While ants might sip this nectar of 

 without plants being any the belter or the w< >rse; 

 a very different result has followed upon the visits 

 of bees, wasps, and other hairy-coated callers. 

 These, as they devour nectar, dust themselves 

 with the pollen near by. Yellowed or whil 

 with this freightage, moth and butterfly, as 

 they sail through the air, know not that they 

 are publishing the banns of marriage between 

 two blossoms acres or, it may lie, miles apart. 

 Yet so it is. Alighting on a new flower the 

 insect rubs a pollen grain on a stigma ready 

 to receive it, and lo ! the rites of matrimony 

 are solemnized then and there. Unwittingly 

 the little visitor has wrought a task bigger 

 with fate than many an act loudly trumpeted 

 among the mightiest deeds of men! On the 

 threshold of a Lady's Slipper a bee may often be 

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