THE FLOWER AND THE BEE 



is an insect fauna rich both in species and individuals, flowers 

 display an infinite number of brilliant hues and delicate shades 

 which surpass the power of the artist and naturalist to de- 

 scribe. There is a wonderful variety of bicolored, tricolored, 

 and variegated blossoms, often mottled and veined in end- 

 less ways. Not only are the prismatic colors — red, orange, 

 yellow, green, blue, and violet — displayed by many species 

 with a profusion of intermediate shades, but rarer colors like 

 black, brown, scarlet, crimson, and lurid purple are not unrepre- 

 sented. Nature has tried her skill as a colorist in the metallic 

 lustres and translucent hues of minerals; in the vivid, living 

 tints of corals and sea-anemones; in the lights and shades re- 

 flected by the scales of the butterflies' wings; and in the bril- 

 liant iridescent plumage of birds; but nowhere are her inex- 

 haustible resources in chromatics so bountifully displayed as 

 in the colors of flowers. 



A flora in which the flowers were all of one color would be 

 at a great disadvantage. The value of color contrasts is evi- 

 dent, for they enable the visitors, more especially the bees, 

 easily to remain constant to a single plant species in collecting 

 pollen and nectar. If they were to visit flowers indiscriminately, 

 much pollen would be wasted and much time and effort lost in 

 locating the nectar. In the Alpine flora of the Tyrol, in the 

 heights above the tree-line, there is no spring and no autumn — 

 only a short summer following a long winter. All the flowers 

 have, therefore, to blossom in this short time. "White and red, 

 yellow and blue, brown and green," says Kerner, "stand in 

 varied combination on a hand's breadth of space. Hardly has 

 the snow melted than there appear almost simultaneously the 

 violet bells of the soldanellas and the golden flowers of the 

 cinquefoil, the white crowfoot and androsace, the red silenes and 

 primulas, the blue gentians and the yellow auriculas, the heaven- 



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