2 28 Guests Welcome and Unwelcome 



insects, the more needful it is to economize their time 

 and labour, and to avoid the risk, which solitary plants 

 would run, of being overlooked altogether. Here, as 

 elsewhere, ' union is strength '; and the butterfly must 

 be blind indeed which could fail to notice these masses 

 of brilliant colour. 



For the chief flower-visitors in these Alpine regions 

 are moths and butterflies, together with flies and 

 beetles ; and it is curious to see how flowers which are 

 visited by bees in the plains and lower mountain- 

 regions are modified to suit moths or butterflies when 

 they come up higher. 



Of the many orchids, for instance, which grow in the 

 plains, all but very few — four or five, perhaps — are 

 visited by bees ; but in the Alps, out of five species, all 

 but one or two are dependent upon butterflies or 

 moths. 



Flowers change in colour when they migrate to 

 these higher regions, on purpose to attract more notice 

 Our pale yellow primrose is fertilized almost entirely 

 by moths, but it might be overlooked among the bright 

 flowers of the Alps if it did not dress more gaily there, 

 so it wears brilliant pink and magenta. The wild pinks 

 also, which straggle about here and there in the low- 

 lands, sure not to escape notice among the many 

 visitors constantly flitting to and fro, here take the 

 precaution of growing larger blossoms, besides massing 

 themselves together in such a way as to catch the eye 

 of any wandering insect. 



Large masses, large blossoms, brilliant colours — 

 these are the means by which the fewer insects of the 

 high Alps are guided without loss of time to the place 

 where they are wanted ; and flowers which might never 



