20 Flowers and their Unbidden Guests. 



the way by leaves, stems, or hairs ; or wasted by wind 

 and weather; and how improbable it also is, that a 

 second flower to which the wingless insect, in spite of 

 all the dangers by the way, stiE. brings some of the 

 pollen from the first flower, will be one exactly suitable 

 for its reception. Flying insects in their search for 

 nectar frequently confine themselves during their rapid 

 visitation of successive flowers to the blossoms of one 

 and the same species,^ whereas the wingless ones, after 

 visiting and leaving a given flower, take no heed to 

 reach another of the same species, but when back again 

 on the ground are diverted by the least thing, and make 

 the best of anything that turns up of use in their further 

 progress. Herein we have a very probable explanation 

 of the fact that flowers of very small size, flowers, that 



^ For example, in a meadow at Trins, in the Gsolinitz valley, I 

 saw BomJms montanus Gerst. visiting only the inconspicuous flowers 

 of Anthyllis alpestris Kit., whilst the numerous and far more strik- 

 ing nectar-bearing flowers of Pedicularis Jacquvni Koch, and Pedi- 

 cularis incwrnata Jacq. were passed over. Contrariwise, in another 

 place, namely in a meadow in the Padail valley, I saw this same 

 Bomhus montanus buzzing from one Pedicula/ris flower to another, 

 whilst passing over the intermixed Anthyllis alpestris. Neither in 

 the one case nor in the other were the flowers in question filled with 

 beetles ; and the nectar of the despised blossoms would have been 

 perfectly easily accessible to the humble-bee. It appears that the 

 humtle-bees always devote themselves at one time to the plunder 

 of one species of plant. 



[It is curious that a similar observation as to the habits of bees 

 should have been made by Aristotle. " A bee," he says (H. An. 

 ix. 40), " on any one expedition, does not pass from one kind of 

 plant to another, but confines itself to a single species, for instance 

 to violets, and does not change until it has first returned to the 

 hive." — Editor.] 



