50 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



THE SALLOW AND ITS GUESTS. 



The sallow, on the other hand, which is simul- 

 taneously displaying its yellow catkins in sheltered 

 places, dares not trust to the fickle wind. The male 

 and female flowers the glorious yellow catkins on 

 the branches which rustics gather as " palm " at 

 Eastertide, are the male bloom inhabit separate 

 trees ; and a female plant situated, say, at the eastern 

 end of a group of sallows would have a poor chance 

 of seed if the wind should blow persistently from 

 the east during the short blooming period. For this 

 reason trees that rely upon the wind have to pro- 

 duce an exaggerated supply of pollen, which, in the 

 shape of fine yellow dust, is carried immense dis- 

 tances and sprinkled over great tracts of country. 

 Often when the wind blows you can see it flying in 

 dense pufls like smoke from the flowering branches 

 of the pines. The sallow, however, employs the 

 more trustworthy agency of insects, whom it pays 

 with honey for their services in carrying pollen 

 grains, by accident, from flower to flower. So on 

 any sunny morning you can find the sallows so 

 thronged with bees that you might almost suspect a 

 swarm in the bushes, while at night the same clumps 

 are the moth-collector's happy hunting-ground. Here 

 he finds again many of the same furred moths whose 

 eyes glowed like opals under the light of his lantern 

 on the ivy-blossom in autumn ; and these survivors 

 from a long winter sleep are nightly reinforced by 

 new hosts of the moths of spring. 



