Honey 183 



Some flowers ripen the stamens first, so that when the 

 pollen is ripe the pistil is not sufficiently mature to receive 

 it, and when the pistil is ready the pollen is withered or 

 has been removed. Others again ripen the pistil first. 

 Still others have pistils and stamens so placed with rela- 

 tion to each other that the pollen cannot reach the pistil. 

 Some flowers possess only stamens, the pistils being found 

 in other blossoms that have no stamens. Many wonderful 

 and beautiful forms of flowers have developed to insure 

 cross-fertilization by certain insects, an interesting subject 

 which has been greatly developed and much written about 

 in recent years. The task of carrying pollen does not rest 

 wholly with the discretion of the bees, but is obligatory 

 upon them, sometimes indeed proving a very disagreeable 

 necessity, as in those orchids where the pollen masses 

 smear the bees in what must be quite a disagreeable man- 

 ner, and in the common milkweed, where the pollen is 

 drawn forth in little sticky bundles from the anthers when 

 the bee's body touches them. These sticky masses of 

 milkweed pollen sometimes cling to the feet of the bees 

 and tangle them up so that the little creatures become 

 helpless and perish through the over-zeal of the milkweed. 



It was doubtless the attachment of these pollen masses 

 to the heads of the bees that Butler refers to as marks of 

 office : — 



" Besides their sovereign, the bees have also subordinate 

 governors and leaders, not unfitly resembling captains and 

 coronels of soldiers. For, different from the rest, they bear 

 for their crest a tuft or tossel, in some colored yellow, in 

 some murrey, in manner of a plume ; whereof some turn 

 downward like an Ostric-feather, others stand upright like 

 a Hern-top. And of both sorts some are greater and some 

 less, as if there were degrees of those dignities among 

 them. In all other respects they are like to the vulgar." 



