330 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



preceding it, which caused this bee to enter a foxglove against 

 its usual habits, if there was really a connection between the 

 two facts. 



I made a similar observation in regard to B. terrestris, a 

 species which, whatever are its habits in England, may be 

 watched here, hour after hour and day after day, without ever 

 being seen to enter the cup of a foxglove — always either the per- 

 forated necks of the flower or the naked green calyces are 

 resorted to. This particular individual, however, when first 

 observed by me, was just crawling, in a state, as it seemed, of 

 great decrepitude, into one of the "gloves." With the view of, 

 as far as possible, testing its object in doing so, I took out my 

 scissors, and snipped off a portion of the tube, longitudinally. 

 Almost immediately I saw the proboscis of the bee shoot out, to 

 an astonishing length, over the moist surface of the calyx thus 

 laid bare. This was a wonderful thing to look at through the 

 Coddington lens, which I could do now with perfect ease. The 

 proboscis was very long, and when it seemed that it could 

 stretch no farther, another and thinner portion darted out from 

 what had seemed the end of it, the tip of which was enlarged and 

 tripartite, having, as it were, three lips, which pressed upon the 

 exposed surface of the pistil or ovary of the flower. It then shot 

 back, and this process was repeated, at intervals, two or three 

 times, the instrument being, no doubt, employed, when I did not 

 see it, in searching some part of the calyx that had not been laid 

 bare. The bee, now, slowly and with great difficulty — in the 

 most decrepit manner imaginable — crawled out of the foxglove, 

 over another, and into the one next it, where, again, upon using 

 the scissors, I saw the proboscis at work. Then, coming out 

 once more, it just managed to get on to the mouth of another 

 blossom — a short one — where it clung, seeming to be on the 

 point of death. 



Here, then, we have two instances of bees, not ordinarily in 

 the habit of entering foxgloves, doing so whilst in a state which, 

 whether it precedes death or not, is not, at any rate, a normal 

 one. In one of these cases, however, and therefore, presumably, 

 in the other also, not only has the bee entered the cups, but, as 

 we have seen, it has crawled up to their ends, and extracted the 

 juices of the flower, as do those who habitually obtain them in 



