Letting the Bees Do 

 Their Work 



Nature Will Help Us 

 All She Can 



OUT in the desert regions of the southwestern 

 United States there grows a very remark- 

 able plant called the yucca, or Spanish 

 bayonet. Doubtless you have noticed it from the 

 car window, or you may have seen it growing in 

 a garden. Its bristling array of bayonet-like leaves 

 gives it a very individual appearance, and the 

 cluster of creamy white flowers that it puts forth 

 on its tall central stalk gives it added distinction. 



But even if you are familiar with the appear- 

 ance of the plant, you perhaps have never heard 

 the wonderful story of its alliance with a particular 

 species of insect, upon which alliance the lives of 

 both plant and insect absolutely depend. 



The story is one of the most curious ones in 

 the entire range of plant and animal life. Cases 

 of so-called "symbiosis," in which an insect and a 

 plant are mutually modified for mutual aid, are 



[Volume III — Chapter VI] 



