108 FIEST STUDIES IN PLANT LIFE 



finger posts to show the way to the honey ! Grooves 

 are on the small petals, and these grooves lead to one 

 place — a little hole. Follow up this track, and you 

 will come to the honey-tube. The insect knows it, 

 and loses not a second in finding the hole and in 

 thrusting in its sucker. Meantime, the upper stamens 

 are dusting the breast of the insect with pollen, and 

 the lower stamens are dusting its head and sucker ; 

 so that when it flies to a riper flower that has the 

 stigma open the dust is sure to fall where it is 

 wanted. 



10. The Honey-tube. And then there is the 

 honey-tube itself. But for the insects there would 

 have been no honey-tube. We know this because 

 flowers that have never had their pollen carried by 

 insects have no honey. 



11. Even now we have not got to the end of the list 

 of the things the geranium owes to the insects. We 

 have still to add the downward-pointing hairs of the 

 flower-stalk which keep small honey thieves from 

 creeping up. No insects, no honey ; no honey, no 

 downward-pointing hairs ! 



12. Why does the scarlet geranium make so 

 little seed? And now we come to a difiiculty. I 

 have just been looking for ripe seed eases ; and out of 

 forty flowers I have found only four that have suc- 

 ceeded in getting ripe seed. Four out of forty ! 

 Well, you must remember that the scarlet geranium 

 did not learn its ways in a garden. If you want 

 merely to see a lion, you go to the Zoological Gardens ; 

 but if you want to know all about a lion, you must go 

 to the wilds of Africa, where the lion is at home. In 



