FREAKS OF PLAJ\T LIFE. 



and cither enter the tube immediately there, feed- 

 ing downward upon the honey pastures, or would 

 linger at the trunk, sipping along the whole edge of 

 the lower lip and eventually enter near the cleft. 

 After entering (which they generally do with great 

 caution and circumspection) they begin again to 

 feed, but their foothold, for some reason or other, 

 seems unsecure, and they occasionally slip, as it ap- 

 pears to me, upon this exquisitely soft and velvety 

 declining pubescence. The nectar is not exuded or 

 smeared over the whole of tins surface, but seems 

 disposed in separate little drops. I have seen them 

 regain their foothold after slipping, and continue to 

 sip, but always moving slowly and with apparent 

 caution, as if aware that they are treading on dan- 

 gerous ground. After sipping their fill they fre- 

 quently remain motionless, as if satiated with delight, 

 and, in the usual self-congratulatory manner of flies, 

 proceed to rub their legs together, but in reality, I 

 suppose, to cleanse them. It is then they betake 

 themselves to flight, strike themselves against the 

 opposite sides of the prison-house, either upward or 

 downward, generally the former. Obtaining no perch 

 or foothold, they rebound off from this velvety micro- 

 scopica^wuwfc^mr.whichlines the inner surface still 

 lower, until, by a series of zigzag but generally down- 

 ward falling flights, they finally reach the coarser and 

 more bristly pubescence of the lower chamber, where, 



