56 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



Already the twenty-mile circle from Charing Cross 

 is nearly starless, and it needs a two-hours' journey 

 to take a skilled topographer to a wood or covert- 

 side, where the primroses are at peace. Here the 

 unimaginative male person rests and inhales the 

 subtle perfume of a fine day, listens to the upward 

 carol of the lark, watches the blusterous humble-bee 

 questing for a hole in which to build, and goes 

 home, saying no more than that he has seen the 

 primroses. 



The teacher of " Nature Study," too, believes that 

 he escapes Peter Bell rank for himself and his class 

 when he takes the primrose to pieces and mentions 

 its parts. He points out, what every child used to 

 learn for himself, that some of the flowers have pistils, 

 reaching to the throat of the corolla tube, while the 

 stamens are found half-way down, and that others have 

 the stamens at the top and a short stigma reaching 

 only half-way up. And then he checks all further 

 inquiry by explaining the object of this " dimor- 

 phism." 



"When the bee begins by visiting a thrum-eyed 

 ' blossom she collects a quantity of pollen on the hairs 

 at the top of her proboscis. If she then visits a 

 flower of the same type she does not fertilise its 

 pistil, but only gathers a little more pollen. As soon, 

 however, as she reaches a pin-eyed blossom she un- 

 consciously deposits some of this store of pollen on 

 the sensitive surface or pin of its pistil ; while at the 

 same time, some more pollen, half-way down the 

 tube, clings to her proboscis, and is similarly rubbed 

 off against the pistil of the next thrum-eyed blossom 

 she chances to visit. The exact correspondence in 

 position of the various parts in the two diverse forms 



