312 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 
pollen-masses. A bee will gather several of these 
at once, and I have seen one buzzing away from 
a head of milkweed loaded with no fewer than 
nine. Thus encumbered she was for a moment 
held prisoner by the flower, unable to pull herself 
loose. Following the ancient custom of the bees, 
she carried the pollen-masses at once to another 
milkweed plant, and perched upon one of its 
flowers, in the same position in which she had 
stood when visiting the first. This brought some 
of the pollen-masses on her feet exactly opposite 
the slits running through the stamen-ring to the 
pistil. 
The pollen-masses, when they are first extracted, 
stand wide apart. But as the insect flies through 
the air with them they dry somewhat, and in dry- 
ing they droop so close together that they can both 
be introduced into the lower and wider part of 
the stamen-slit of another flower (Figs. 87, ¢ and /). 
When the insect literally tears itself away from 
this second flower it snaps the cords which binds 
the pollen-masses to the little black disk. The 
disk still clings to the insect’s foot as a souvenir of 
its visit to the first milkweed blossom, but the 
pollen-masses are left behind pressed close to the 
little green pistils of milkweed blossom number two. 
