Magenta to Pink 



plied prodigiously. No; the bee's happiness rests on her knowl- 

 edge that only the butterflies' long tongues can honestly share with 

 her the brimming wells of nectar in each tiny floret. Children who 

 have sucked them too appreciate her rapture. If we examine a little 

 flower under the magnifying glass, we shall see why its struc- 

 ture places it in the pea family. Bumblebees so depress the keel 

 either when they sip, or feed on pollen, that their heads and tongues 

 get well dusted with the yellow powder, which they transfer to the 

 stigmas of other flowers; whereas the butterflies are of doubtful 

 value, if not injurious, since their long, slender tongues easily 

 drain the nectar without depressing the keel. Even if a few grains 

 of pollen should cling to their tongues, it would probably be wiped 

 offas they withdrew them through the narrow slit, where the petals 

 nearly meet, at the mouth of the flower. Bombus terrestris de- 

 lights in nipping holes at the base of the tube, which other pilferers 

 also profit by. Our country is so much richer in butterflies than 

 Europe, it is scarcely surprising that Professor Robertson found 

 thirteen Lepidoptera out of twenty insect visitors to this clover in 

 Illinois, whereas Miiller caught only eight butterflies on it out of 

 a list of thirty-nine visitors in Germany. The fritillaries and the 

 sulphurs are always seen about the clover fields among many 

 others, and the "dusky wings" and the caterpillar of several 

 species feeds almost exclusively on this plant. 



"To live in clover," from the insect's point of view at least, 

 may well mean a life of luxury and affluence. Most peasants in 

 Europe will tell you that a dream about the flower foretells not 

 only a happy marriage, but long life and prosperity. For ages the 

 clover has been counted a mystic plant, and all sorts of good and 

 bad luck were said to attend the finding of variations of its leaves 

 which had more than the common number of leaflets. At even- 

 ing these leaflets fold downward, the side ones like two hands 

 clasped in prayer, the end one bowed over them. In this fashion 

 the leaves of the white and other clovers also go to sleep, to pro- 

 tect their sensitive surfaces from cold by radiation, it is thought. 



The Zig-zag Clover, Cow or Marl-Grass (T. Medium), a 

 native of Europe and Asia, now naturalized in the eastern half 

 of the United States and Canada, may scarcely be told from the 

 common red clover, except by its crooked, angular stems often 

 provokingly straight by its unspotted leaves, and the short pe- 

 duncle in which its heads are elevated above the calyx. 



Farmers here are beginning to learn the value of the beauti- 

 ful Crimson, Carnation, Italian Clover, or Napoleons (T. incarna- 

 tum), and happily there are many fields and waste places in the 

 East already harboring the brilliant runaways. The narrow heads 

 may be two and a half inches long. A meadow of this fodder 

 plant makes one envious of the very cattle that may spend the 

 summer day wading through acres of its deep bright bloom. 



102 



