224 EYE SPY 



" All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' bowers 

 The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden flowers, 

 Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love to try 

 With pins. They'll worry yourn so, boys, bime-by." 



Those " shrinkin' hearts " of the barberry blos- 

 som, so long the wonder and amusement of chil- 

 dren, including many children of adult growth, 

 have, so far as I know, herein found their first and 

 only historian — historian, but not interpreter. For 

 Hosea Biglow, nor his literary parent, James Rus- 

 sell Lowell, never dreamed of the significance of 

 this strange spectacle in the shrinkin' hearts of 

 the barberry bloom when surprised with the point 

 of a pin. 



But the bee can tell us all about it. He has 

 known this singular trick in the barberry for 

 ages, and kept the secret all to himself. Only 

 comparatively recently (1859 or thereabouts) did 

 the secret leak out, when Darwin, by the previous 

 hints of several other philosophers, discovered the 

 key which unlocked the mystery of this as well 

 as thousands of other similar riddles among the 

 flowers. 



These strange " manners " of the blossoms had 

 then a deep vital principle at their base. They 

 had not always been thus, but had gradually, 

 through long ages of time, changed and modi- 

 fied their shapes, colors, odors, nectar, and their 

 manners for one purpose — to insure their pollen 



