THE VOICE OF THE DESERT 



96 



which I was famihar, only one after Riley's own seemed 

 on internal evidence to be indubitably first hand. The most 

 learned entomologist of this region where yucca flourishes 

 confessed that he had never seen the performance and 

 didn't know anybody who had. Not too willingly — since I 

 knew the difficulties, which include, besides the dilatori- 

 ness of the insect, darkness, a limited blooming season, and 

 flowers lifted high above one's head — I decided to try to 

 see for myself. And not to sustain any suspense which 

 any reader may feel, I did. Three times Pronuba demon- 

 strated before my eyes how she performed the crucial act, 

 mounting the pistil of the recently opened flower and with 

 prolonged purposefulness rubbing the pistil vigorously to 

 get the pollen well in. 



Partly to avoid the possibility that some amateur ahen- 

 ist might telephone a mental hospital that for several 

 evenings a maniac had been seen standing for two hours 

 and more peering at yucca flowers with a flashhght, I de- 

 cided to make my observations well out into the desert 

 and some twenty miles from town. And for poetic if not 

 for strictly scientific reasons it was a good idea. It is one 

 thing to read about what Pronuba does.. It would be quite 

 another to see her at work in a neighbor's back yard. But 

 the performance belongs properly among the mysteries 

 which one can only appreciate fully when the context is 

 remote from the human and as exclusively as possible in 

 that of almost timeless nature. 



The moonless night was brilliant with stars. In the dis- 

 tance a coyote pack obligingly set up its chorus which is 

 as v^ld a sound as one is likely to hear anywhere. And 

 then, presently, there was Pronuba, even more insignificant 

 looking than I had expected her to be, performing her 



