S6 THE BEE AS AN INSECT. [Ch. i. 



to be efficacious in conveying this dust to the right 

 spot. Owners of fruit trees have noticed, in a season 

 generally unfavourable to the orchard, that if during 

 only one fine forenoon the bees had spread freely 

 amongst the blossoms of a particular tree, that tree 

 would prove more fruitful than its fellows. On this 

 account the orchard is a good place for the apiary, for 

 it seems that the more abundant the honey the better 

 will be the crop of fruit. The whole subject is scien- 

 tifically treated in Mr. Darwin's remarkable book, " The 

 Fertilisation of Orchids,'' but we must add to the fore- 

 going how much more urgent are the services of bees in 

 the case of what are termed monoecious and dicecious 

 plants, the former of which have the stamens and pistils 

 ■//! different flowers, and the latter liave these flowers upon 

 diffc7-ent roots. A familiar example of the former is found 

 in the nut tree, whose long catkins, hanging like cater- 

 pillars in the early spring, are assemblages of male 

 flowers ; while the females, from which the nuts develop, 

 may be detected by their crimson pistil-tips (stigmas), 

 and grow in stalkless clusters of two or three in the 

 openings of remote scaly buds. But for the visits or 

 bees, our autumn nutting rambles would thus have but 

 little prospect of success. In the second case, often very 

 considerable distances intervene between the two flowers ; 

 for instance, with the common dog mercury {^Mercurialis 

 pei-ennis), a botanist may find plantation after plantation 

 containing male flowers by thousands, but not a single 



