GYROSTACHYS 89 



small ridge. As innocent as the trick egg of a magician is 

 this minute furrow, but touch it ever so lightly with a fine 

 bristle, and presto, the beak splits and an elliptical crack 

 rounds through its length and loosens a little sticky boat- 

 shaped disc that adheres to the bristle as it is drawn away 

 (Plate XXXVI, Fig. 3). The column, that is, the whole 

 apparatus of stigma, anthers and beak, lies so closely pressed 

 against the lip of the Lady's-Tresses that a bee alighting on 

 this threshold cannot stick his proboscis into the honey well 

 without doing the trick of the bristle, for the slightest touch, 

 even the irritating vapour of chloroform, will start the split. 

 Consequently, the bee goes off with a tiny boat glued fast 

 to his proboscis. This would not mean much, were it not 

 that long before the flower expands the anther cells, which 

 are pressed just over the beak or rostellum, open and let 

 the pollen masses fall right on the boat; so that as the bee 

 flies away he carries a freighted cargo that has been awaiting 

 transportation. 



Darwin says : "At Torquay, I watched for about half an 

 hour a number of these flowers growing together, and saw 

 three kinds of bumblebees visit them. I caught one and 

 examined its proboscis; on the superior lamina, some little 

 way from the tip, two perfect pollinia (pollen masses) were 

 attached, and three other boat-formed discs without pollen; 

 so that this bee had removed the pollinia from five flowers 

 and had probably left the pollen of three on the stigmas of 

 other flowers." 



But is not the bee, as she thrusts her proboscis in beneath 



