How to Attract the Birds 



poising on rapidly vibrating wings before first one 

 inverted horn, then another, until he circles the 

 flower and drains each tube with ease, it will be 

 seen that, in making this round, his forehead and 

 bill must wipe off some of the pollen from the 

 golden tassel of stamens which protrudes from the 

 older flowers and that in visiting the newly opened 

 columbines in the stigmatic stage, he must neces- 

 sarily leave some of the vitalizing dust on them. 

 Thus the columbine compels its chosen guest, all 

 unwittingly, to do its bidding. 



After the columbine has faded, which is the next 

 flower to lure the ruby-throat ? Exquisite bright 

 orange-coloured and brown-speckled jewel-weed 

 blossoms hanging at a horizontal from the tender 

 plant which fringes our mill ponds, ditches and 

 streams, appear in July, to last sparingly through 

 the summer. The incurved, slender tip of their 

 horns secrete nectar with whose overflow only the 

 lusty, acrobatic bumble-bee must be content. To 

 the abundant white pollen, however, he freely helps 

 himself, and in so doing he may sometimes benefit 

 his entertainer. But the humming-bird, charmed 

 by the bright, graceful flower and, indeed, who is 

 not ? has no difficulty in directing his tongue 

 around curves ; and as he inserts his bill obliquely 

 into the spur while he hovers above, the observer 

 can easily see, on studying the jewel-weed's mechan- 

 ism, how invaluable his services to it must be. 

 This is one of the plants which bear also cleistoga- 

 mous, or never opening, self-fertilized inconspicuous 

 flowers. It has found its way into England, and 

 Darwin recorded that there are twenty plants 



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