ARTIFICIAL FERTILISATION. 29l 



the Old World that were introduced here at ahout the same time 

 as the bee. These highly-coloured flowers and the hive-bee, as 

 far as Australia is concerned, are coeval. Untold generations of 

 them had learned to work these blooms, we are informed, and their 

 experience had greatly aided in the development of species and the 

 production of showy flowers of the land of our fathers. On the 

 introduction of the bees and the flowers referred to, the former 

 appear to have suddenly turned their attention from the latter, 

 and apprenticed themselves to the work of attending to the whitish 

 native honey-bearing flowers of the Colony — a colour that the 

 writers on the subject say the bees studiously avoid for the more 

 gorgeously-coloured ones their progenitors had been at such pains 

 to produce by erecting those bright-coloured signs for the benefit 

 of the bees of to-day, for the purpose of saving them both time 

 and labour. Nevertheless, the hive bees, when introduced here, 

 after having been educated to the highest standard in the recogni- 

 tion of colours they are said to possess in Europe, have started 

 de novo, and worked upon, not our introduced ornamental flowers, 

 nor our showy blooms of "red, blue, and purple," but upon 

 "simple white or yellow ones"; so unlike the education in colours 

 they had received in the other side of the world. Question — Will 

 our eucalypti and acacias, and other white and yellow flora, in 

 ages to come, develop highly-coloured flowers and of a larger size 

 than at present, and will the bees then forsake the colours they 

 now work upon in the same way they are said "to have done in cne 

 other parts of the world ? It is queer bees should have gone back 

 in their tastes for colours when they crossed the equator in coming 

 to this side of the world. 



Some years ago a series of questions were submitted by the 

 Department of Agriculture to the bee-keepers of this State, rela- 

 tive to what plants were visited by bees as regards size and colour 

 of blooms. 



In the ranks of the bee-keepers are men of keen observation 

 as to whence honey flow conies. The whole of the answers given 

 are full of interest. Of course, the imported fruit-trees and other 

 exotic flowering plants are named as giving the spring supply of 

 pollen and honey, but the ironbark, grey gum, bloodwood, blue 

 gums, and the eucalypts generally are by far the most remarkable 

 as honey-yielding, and all these have white flowers. In the 

 northern districts, the broad and narrow-leaved tea-tree is stated 

 "to be the largest honey -yielder we have"; therefore its * 



