138 MY STUDIO NEIGHBORS 



through a tiny orifice in precisely the right posi- 

 tion to strike the pollen-dusted body of the bee, as 

 he forced his tongue through the tiny aperture.* 



If their dainty mechanism excite our wonder, 

 what shall be said of the revelations in the great 

 order of the Compositae, where each so-called 

 flower, as in the dandelion, daisy, cone-flower, mari- 

 gold, is really a dense cluster of minute flowers, 

 each as perfect in its construction as in the exam- 

 ples already mentioned, each with its own pecul- 

 iar plan designed to insure the transfer of its own 

 pollen to the stigma of its neighbor, while exclud- 

 ing it from its own ? 



All summer long the cone - flower, Fig. 10 

 (Rudbeckia hirtd), blooms in our fields, but how 

 few of us imagine the strange processes which 

 are being enacted in that purple cone ! Let us 

 examine it closely. If we pluck one of the 

 blossom's heads and keep it in a vase over- 

 night, we shall probably see on the following 

 morning a tiny yellow ring of pollen encircling 

 the outer edge of the cone. In this way only 



* In numerous instances observed since the above was writ- 

 ten I have noted the larger bumblebees upon the blossom. 

 These insects have a different method of approach, hanging be- 

 neath the flower, the anthers being clapped against their thorax 

 at the juncture of the wings, instead of the abdomen, as in the 

 smaller bee. 



