206 LUTHER BURBANK 



day but clover blossoms. Or if it begins on an 

 orange tree, it passes the cherries, the peaches, 

 the apples and anything else which may be in 

 bloom, but will go miles to find orange trees; or 

 if it starts on onions, then the geraniums and the 

 carnations and the poppies have no attraction 

 for it. 



Which, by the way, is the reason that the bees 

 produce, for themselves and for us, clover honey, 

 and orange honey, and onion honey, each with a 

 distinct flavor of its own. 



But there are other reasons why the flowers do 

 not get mixed up. 



One is that while some flowers advertise to 

 the bees, others advertise only to the hum- 

 ming birds — and bees cannot get to the honey 

 in the bird flowers and bee flowers do not in- 

 terest the birds; some flowers open in the 

 early morning, and some toward noon; some 

 in the night; some bloom in April, and some 

 in July. 



There are structural as well as other differ- 

 ences between the various families of plants 

 which make cross-pollination impossible; and so 

 on through a wide range of reasons why certain 

 plants are not readily mated with others — which 

 will lead us, in a later chapter, into the interest- 

 ing study of plant affinities. 



