56 FAMILIAR TREES 



butterflies and moths, who, hovering beneath them, 

 thrust their proboscis into the bell to gather the 

 honey clinging to the hairs on the filaments. In doing 

 this, the bees must touch some of the twenty tail-like 

 processes which radiate from the style, like spokes to 

 a wheel, and if they do so, will tear the open mouth 

 of the anther away from its contact with that; central 

 column, when the pollen will fall upon the hairy head 

 and back of the insect visitor, to be carried to the 

 stigma of the next blossom against which it may run 

 its head. 



The round berries that succeed these elaborate 

 blossoms have a surface projecting in numerous points, 

 more like the fruit of the Litchi than that of the 

 Strawberry, and when they are fully ripe, which is not 

 until fourteen m-onths after the fall of the corollas, 

 they are of an orange-scarlet, and far better worth 

 eating than before. They are divided internally into 

 five chambers, each containing four or five seeds. In 

 Killarney they are eaten, in some parts of France 

 they are preserved, and in Corsica a wine was made 

 from them ; but in Southern Italy and on the Riviera 

 they are neglected. 



The conversion of the reddish wood of this tree 

 into small mementoes of the spot is the chief industry 

 at Killarney. 



