16 FAMILIAK GABDEX FLOWERS. 



is vvheu the seed is newly ripe in autumn^ to aflord the 

 plants a long season of growth before the sunshine persuades 

 them to flower. 



Mr. Darwin, in his interesting work on " Cross and 

 Self-fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom," gives some 

 interesting particulars of the ingenious way in which 

 bumble-bees obtain the honey from the snap-dragon when 

 they cannot push past the projecting lip : " In AntirrMiium 

 majus one or two holes had been made on the lower side, 

 close to the little protuberance which represents the nec- 

 tary, and therefore directly in front of and close to the spot 

 where the nectar is secreted." In experiments recorded at 

 page 363 of the work above quoted, Mr. Darwin found that 

 while fifty seed-pods protected by a net gave nearly ten 

 grains of seed, a similar number of pods from plants that 

 the bumble-bees had free access to yielded over twenty- three 

 grains of seed. It is not, however, by piercing holes in the 

 flower that the bees effect fertilisation, but by thrusting 

 their way through the jaws of the dragon into the throat, 

 where they encounter the stamens, and becoming dusted 

 with pollen, leave some of it on the stigma of that or the 

 next flower they enter in like manner. 



