264 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE. 



time after sunset and well on towards darkness. On warm, calm 

 evenings I have more than once seen bees returning home by the 

 light of the moon, when the latter has been shining brightly. Of 

 course, diurnal flowers are visited by diurnal insects. Flowers that 

 open in the twilight or after are visited chiefly by moths. 



Anemophilus flowers (those that are fertilised by the wind) 

 do not close after they have once opened. The anthers being at- 

 tached to the filament so tenderly, the slightest movement caused 

 by a passing breeze is sufficient to shake the pollen to the stigma. 

 It is the soft, gentle breeze that is efficacious in the fertilisation 

 of cereal crops — wind just sufficiently strong to carry the pollen a 

 few feet from the anther that produced it. At the time wheat 

 and other cereal crops are in flower, when the pollen is mature 

 and hanging loosely in the anthers, heavy wind storms are as 

 destructive as late frosts. Many a crop that has appeared promis- 

 ing enough when in blade, has failed to give a heavy yield, owing 

 to strong winds catching up the pollen and wafting it away into 

 the bush, or elsewhere, where its influence is lost. 



The arrangement of the reproductive organs in blossoms vary 

 very considerably in different classes of plant life, and the most 

 casual observer must have noticed the many forms of insect life. 

 Those insects that subsist on the honey they extract from flowers 

 are, in many instances, so constructed as to appear to fit the 

 flowers they visit. Again, the construction of certain flowers is 

 only adaptable to the wants of certain insects. The nectary is so 

 situated in different classes of flowers that the honey it contains 

 can only be obtained by the insect designed to fertilise them. The 

 length of tongue in moths, butterflies, and bees is well-known, 

 and its length plays no inconsiderable part in perpetuating variet- 

 ies and species of the vegtable kingdom. In Darwin's work, "Fer- 

 tilisation of Orchids" — a book everyone interested in the subject 

 should read — he mentions one flower as having a spur-like form, 

 from 10 to 11 inches long, with the nectary situated at its base, 

 and for the purpose of obtaining the honey contained therein 

 there must be an insect with a tongue of an equal length. It 

 appears that this particular orchid is a native of Madagascar. 

 Some orchid hunters, in searching that island for specimens, came 

 across a moth with a tongue of corresponding length — evidently 

 the agent employed by Nature to fertilise this particular plant. 

 Some plants are only met with in particular localities ; in other 

 localities, having the same conditions of soil, warmth, moisture, etc., 



