i8 Flowers add their Unbidden Guests. 



sucking nectar from the blossoms of the Gentiana 

 havarica. It flitted from one blossom to another, but 

 I was surprised to see that it passed over some of the 

 numerous flowers, though growing close together, with- 

 out attacking them. My first suspicion was that the 

 nectar might have been lately carried off from these 

 flowers by other insects, and that the reason why the 

 moth did not insert its proboscis was, that it smelt ' 

 no nectar. But when I proceeded to open the flowers 

 which had been thus passed over, I found that they 

 were not void of nectar, but that the several canals in 

 the lower part of the coroUa-tube which serve as carriers 

 for the secretion were crammed full with small beetles 

 {Antholiv/m excavatum). I noticed a similar fact in 

 the Gentiana germanica at Trins in the Gschnitz 

 Valley. Those flowers of this plant which were left 

 unvisited by the humble-bees (Bomhus mastrucatus and 

 Psithyrus mstalis) always contained numerous speci- 

 mens of Meligethes exilis in their nectaries ; and at a 

 later period. I had the opportunity of making similar 

 observations on the flowers of Digitalis ambigua Murr. 

 Cuphea platycmitra, Eremurus tauricus, Iris tuherosa, 

 and Primula glutinosa Wulf^ 



^ In Gentiana havarica L., the nectar is stored at tlie bottom of 

 the flower, where it cannot possibly be seen by flying insects, as 

 the corolla-tube is closed by the large circular stigma (Plate I. flg. 

 37). The nectar must therefore in this, as in so many other cases, 

 be smelt by the insects. 



2 It is very probable that the species of Forficula also, which we 

 frequently find working for days together in tubular flowers, so far 



