THE FLOWER AND THE BEE 



Alpenblumen, or the Flowers of the Alps. Here are enumer- 

 ated 5,711 visits by 841 species of anthophilous insects. It is 

 impossible to read this account of the mysteries of the floral 

 world in high altitudes without longing to visit the scene of 

 his investigations. The short summers, the rapid (not to say 

 impetuous) advance of vegetation, the simultaneous blooming 

 of many species, the brilliant hues, the wealth of insects, and 

 especially the great abundance of butterflies, against a back- 

 ground of snowy summits, form a most enticing picture. 

 Mueller published a third book on flowers, besides many shorter 

 papers. 



Hermann died very suddenly, in 1883, while studying the 

 flowers of the Tyrol. He was travelling in part for the benefit 

 of his health, but he was without any premonition of his fate. 

 On the day of his death he had written a long letter to his son 

 at Lippstadt, and his valise was packed for his departure the 

 next morning. Suddenly, on the evening of the '25th of August, 

 a pulmonary attack closed his useful life. It was fitting that 

 a life devoted to the study of highland flowers should come to 

 its close among them. "He is not dead," says his biographer, 

 Ludwig; "he lives, and will live so long as a flower enraptures 

 the eye of an investigator. His bright spirit will live and, we 

 hope, like that of his teacher and friend Darwin, long be a 

 light on the way to truth in the heart of nature." 



Since Mueller's death the most important undertaking has 

 been Knuth's Handbook of Flower Pollination, an encyclo- 

 paedic work in three volumes, giving a complete summary 

 with a bibliography of some four thousand titles of everything 

 that has been done in floroecology up to the beginning of the 

 present century. It was planned and the first two volumes 

 brought out by Paul Knuth, and after his untimely death, at 

 forty years of age, the third volume was completed by Ernst 



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