"Blossom Hosts and Insect Guests 



evolution. It has probably taken centuries for each 

 of these nectaries to become perfectly suited to 

 the particular insect for which it was designed, but 

 through natural selection, each century has added 

 something to the depth of the one nectary and the 

 breadth of the other. 



It is through this law, as you remember, that 

 the cross-fertilized flowers displace the self-fertiHzed 

 ones, and in the same way the flowers that most 

 readily adapt themselves to their insect friends sur- 

 vive and push aside their less well-developed fellows. 



The insect, too, so soon as the flower begins to 

 adapt itself especially to him, must in turn adapt 

 himself to it. If Mistress Butterfly's tongue is too 

 short to reach to the bottom of the flower's nectary, 

 or if Master Bombus's head does not fit the pocket 

 prepared for him, they both fail to obtain their food, 

 and may possibly die of starvation."^ 



It is often said that the laws of Flora's kingdom, 



and the flowers are apt to be close together. The industry of these 

 little creatures is amazing. Bees have been known to visit twenty 

 flowers a minute, and individual blossoms are frequently visited as 

 many as thirty times a day. Nectar is generally secreted by a 

 flower until pollination is etfected, or, until the hope of this end 

 being abandoned, the flower withers. This gives a blossom many 

 more opportunities for cross-fertilization than if its nectar was 

 exhausted by one visitor. 



*This is true only in a limited degree. It is a great advantage to 

 the insect to adapt himself to the flowers he feeds on, but he is not 

 so absolutely dependent upon an individual species of flower as the 

 species often is upon him. 



24 



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