Ants especially unwelcome. 2 1 



is, in which very tiny insects, in pressing forward to the 

 nectariferous recesses, would necessarily come into due 

 contact with the anthers and the stigma {e.g. many 

 Compositse, Cruciferse, Caryophyllacese, Saxifragese, 

 Asperifolise, etc.), are yet provided with defensive appli- 

 ances which keep off such insects as are wingless, and 

 only allow access to such as fly. 



Of all the wingless insects it is the widely dispersed 

 ants that are the most unwelcome guests to flowers. 

 And yet are they the very ones which have the greatest 

 longing for the nectar, as numberless observations suf- 

 ficiently show. Wherever there are aphides there one 

 is sure to find ants seeking for the sweet fluid which 

 these secrete. It is, moreover, well known that where- 

 ever honey, sugar, saccharine fluids, dried fruits, etc., 

 are placed without protection, there ants are to be found. 

 As regards the nectar of flowers they are especially for- 

 midable, inasmuch as they can smell^ saccharine fluids 



1 One of my colleagues at Innsbriiok kept some dried peara on 

 the ground-floor of a house directly contiguous to the garden, and 

 to these the garden ants immediately found their way. As these 

 uninvited guests could not he kept from the ground-floor, the pears 

 were transferred to a room on the second story. But, notwith- 

 standing this, the pears were beset by these same ants the very 

 next day, and when investigation was made as to how the ants 

 could possibly have got to the up-stairs room, it was found that 

 they had made their way by a bell- wire which went from the garden 

 into the second story and ran by the window of the room. The 

 following communication from Gredler at Botzen is also not without 

 interest. One of his colleagues had for months been in the habit of 

 sprinkling pounded sugar on the sill of his window for a train of ants 

 which passed in constant procession from the garden to the window. 



