blossom Hosts ciiid Insect Guests 



aggressive arts with which you perpetuate their 

 vagrancy. A little fly alights upon the small pink 

 blossom, when, lo ! the flower explodes, the insect is 

 greeted with a slap on the face or breast, and a dab 

 of dust in his eyes. For this flower, too, is a veri- 

 table trap, delicately set. Upon the slightest touch, 

 the loaded spring — consisting of the rigid column of 

 filaments enclosing the young pod — is released from 

 the overlapping petals, and the anthers hurl their 

 shower of pollen upon the body of the intruder. 

 But observe the wise adjustment beneath all this 

 mechanism. The stio^ma — the oro^an throuofh which 

 the seeds are fertilized — projects a little beyond the 

 anthers, and is the first to come in contact with the 

 insect, and thus gets a supply of pollen from the 

 previously visited flower. 



It is the pollen-collecting bees which the Beg- 

 gar's Tick wishes to attract. The plant, therefore, 

 has directed its energies, through the ages, to in- 

 creasing its store of golden powder rather than to 

 laying up sweets, its food being intended for 

 unborn generations, not for the insect that does its 

 bidding. 



In the lucerne. Medic ago sativa, the flowers are 

 similarly explosive, and it has been observed that 

 bees find this continual belaboring unpleasant, and 



46 



