THE FLOWER AND THE BEE 



mostly on calm, warm evenings and are far from abundant, 

 their swift flight is a great advantage in enabling them to polli- 

 nate many flowers in a short time. Hawk-moths have the 

 sense of smell very strongly developed, and consequently noc- 

 turnal flowers are usually odoriferous. (Fig. 68.) 



Two genera of hawk -moths fly in the daytime, the clear- 

 winged moths Hemaris and Macroglossa. Some species of 

 Macroglossa so closely resemble humming-birds in their appear- 

 ance and manner of flight that the natives of South America, 

 according to Bates, believe that one can be transmuted into 

 the other. Bates himself, several times by mistake, shot a 

 hawk-moth instead of a humming-bird, and it was long before 

 he could distinguish the one from the other on the wing. The 

 little children of Fritz Mueller came running to him one day 

 and declared in great excitement that they had seen a six- 

 legged humming-bird. 



A common cultivated hawk -moth flower is the sweet- 

 scented, climbing honeysuckle {Lonicera Peridymeniun, Fig. 

 69.) The flowers expand early in the evening and are at first 

 white within and purplish without. The pistil is bent abruptly 

 downward, while the anthers stand directly in front of the 

 entrance, by which arrangement self-pollination is prevented. 

 The fragrance is very powerful and may be perceived at a long 

 distance. In the daytime Kerner placed a hawk-moth 300 

 yards away and marked it with cinnabar. When twilight fell, 

 the moth began to move the feelers, which serve it as olfactory 

 organs, hither and thither a few times, then stretched its wings 

 and flew like an arrow through the garden to the honeysuckle. 

 In the dusk I have often seen several species of moths darting 

 swiftly from flower to flower and, as they poised for a few 

 seconds in the air, coming in contact with the anthers and 

 covering the whole under-side of the body with pollen. x\s a 



148 



