89 



in our gardens and fields of no preference for a particular 

 color, aside from favoring forms, Mliller himself, besides 

 the instances above quoted of yellow flowers being exclu- 

 sively cross-fertilized by bees, states as follows: "The 

 su]})hur-yellow color of Semperviviim Wulfenii seems not to 

 stand on the same rank as the yellow color of some Sedums, 

 but rather to have been developed from a puri)lo color l)y 

 the selective influence of huml)le bees" I 



"In several species of Lonicera fertilized l)y bees the 

 colors are bright red " ! 



"In L. caerulea, adapted for humble bees, they are yel- 

 lowish-white " ! 



Mliller clearly is impartial in his examples when he gives 

 his opinion that purple w-as developed from yellow in one 

 instance by bees, and in two others, bees developed yellow 

 from purple ! 



Lubbock experimented with different colored slips of 

 paper pasted on glass, upon Avhicli he put a drop of honey, 

 and put them on a lawn for the bees, transposing the colors 

 from time to time, with the result that the bees showed a 

 decided preference for blue. 



Mliller on the contrary gives a table of actual visits of 

 bees to different colored flowers, showing that those of a 

 yellowish-white received the most visits, and blue the least 

 number I 



We have seen that bees discriminate between flowers of 

 the same color in the same genus, and between flowers of 

 the same color in different genera, also between flowers of 

 different colors. They actually prefer some small green 

 flowers to some showy blue flowers, and vice versa ; and it 

 is clear that their preferences are for the flower and what it 

 affords and not for mere color. When one sees honey bees 

 leaving beds of red begonia and pelargonium or blue myo- 

 sotis for white clover close cropped by a lawn mowing 

 machine, then forsaking clover for green Ptelia when that 

 comes into bloom, he is quite ready to declare that azure- 



