Guests Welcome and Unwelcome 243 



Many of the plants belonging to the order which 

 contains the catch-flies, campions and pinks, are 

 provided with rings of sticky hairs, and as many as 

 sixty-four small insects have been found at once on 

 one flower-stalk of the red German catch-fly. One 

 can imagine how little nectar would have been left to 

 attract profitable insects, if these sixty-four had been 

 allowed to have their way. Ants are usually very wary 

 in their manner of proceeding, and feel their way 

 carefully up the stalk until they reach the sticky ring, 

 whereupon they generally turn round and come down 

 again; but if they do venture to proceed they are 

 surely lost. 



Stickiness is no impediment to slugs and snails, 

 however, for they overcome it by covering it with their 

 own slime. What they do mind are bristles and 

 prickles, which the armour-clad ant can afford to 

 despise. 



Pricklets, hairs, and fringes inside the blossom, serve 

 often a double purpose, for they both keep out un- 

 welcome visitors and make the welcome ones reach 

 the nectar by the right way. Thus, insects wanting to 

 get at the honey in the spur of the garden-nasturtium, 

 are obliged to climb over the fringe on one of its three 

 lower petals, and this they cannot do without coming 

 in contact with anthers or pistil, which they might 

 otherwise pass untouched. 



Plants sometimes need protection against even their 

 best friends the bees, for some of these, in spite of 

 their many good qualities, have a way of trying to 

 reach the nectar by other than the right way — by 

 house-breaking, in fact, instead of by the front-door ; 

 and others, though willing enough to come in properly, 



