Flowers 
or shrouded in the felt darkness of a London fog, whilst 
others will always oversleep themselves. 
Early in the season, when the weather is favourable, 
one finds the first flowers and first insects. Later, as 
summer approaches, one finds various times of the day 
utilised by certain flowers and their visitors until the 
complex variety of July and August is attained. After 
these months the number rapidly diminishes, but varies 
according to the weather. Even late in November of 
1908 I found twenty-four flowers open along three 
miles of a roadside; four were grasses that had also 
blossomed in spring. This is one of the simplest 
of the fitting reactions which have been so often 
referred to. 
Flowers are not only specialised but are also most 
adaptable to circumstances. 
The secretion of honey is another very interesting 
character. Professor Henslow’s theory, that the con- 
tinual visits of insects and their bites and scratches 
have produced the honey-secretion, has not been 
adopted by many botanists. Sugar is, of course, very 
common in plant tissues, for it is as some form of 
sugar that the products of assimilation travel about 
the plant. Such sugars will certainly diffuse to any 
part of the plant where it is required. If it exudes 
and is taken by insect visitors, then less sugar will 
be available for the building up of stamens or petals, 
so that there might easily be a tendency for petals or 
stamens to become first honey secreting, then reduced, 
and finally nothing but nectaries. 
If one compares the long spur of many orchids 
(usually formed in the modified petal called the lip) 
with the honey spurs of the columbine, of larkspur, 
of violets, of Linaria (Toadflax), the resemblance is very 
remarkable. All these are honey-secreting modifica- 
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