48 Flowers and their Unbidden Guests. 



not only plants whicli actually grow in water, and have 

 their stems therefore completely surrounded hy it, 

 that are sufficiently protected against numerous creep- 

 ing insects, and especially against ants,, hut that 

 the same is true of plants whose stems are encircled 

 merely at the very base with fluid or even with 

 semi-fluid mud. But if such proof be wanting, it 

 can be afforded by observations which I made some 

 years ago in the botanical gardens at Innsbruck. I 

 there cultivate many water and bog plants, not in a 

 common large aquarium, but each one by itself, in 

 a special small tub, filled with its right medium, and 

 then sunk in the earth in its proper place in the 

 systematic division of the garden, amongst the plants 

 of the same order. Many bog plants flourish luxuri- 

 antly in these tubs, and grow over the rim, so that some 

 of their stems and leaves come to lie on the dry earth 

 in which the tubs are sunk. Among others this 

 happened to Gomarum palustre, and it was curious to 

 see how the flowers of those shoots which had 

 grown beyond the edge of the tub on to the dry 

 ground were quite covered with ants, sucking the 

 honey from the deep nectary; whilst the blossoms 

 borne by the shoots in the middle of the tub, and 

 surrounded by liquid mud, were not visited by a single 

 ant. The little insects in their search for nectar 

 could pass unhindered over the dry ground to the 

 leaves and stems which lay upon it, and from these 



