334 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



— I mean, of course, when visiting the foxglove. Even if we 

 suppose this bee to be very quick in noticing these small per- 

 forations in the neck of the corolla — which would not, however, 

 look so small to it— yet it has to miss a number of flowers, 

 whereas the bee who enters them can rifle every one. B. terres- 

 tris, also, though alighting sometimes on the naked calyx, yet 

 certainly, through the same cause, misses a number of blossoms. 

 It would seem, therefore, that the change from the orthodox 

 way, as we may call it, of obtaining nectar from the foxglove, to 

 the ones we are considering, must represent a loss rather than 

 a gain of time, and this should make us doubt whether any such 

 change has taken place. Of course, if the proboscis of any of 

 these bees were not sufficiently long to be effectually employed 

 from within the tube, the whole philosophy of the matter would 

 be changed, and the possibility of any such evolution, as is here 

 imagined, be excluded, in their case. But how can this be ? The 

 part of the foxglove which has to be reached is the moist green 

 base, more or less swollen, of the pistil, and this does not 

 appear to be so tightly enclosed within the tube of the corolla 

 but that a bee, whose proboscis was not altogether abnormal, 

 might press up, so as to reach it, without undue difficulty. 

 Both B. mastrucatus and the small brown bee might, I think, 

 very well do this, and it is probably what that individual of the 

 latter species — the smaller of the two — that I found in one of the 

 " gloves " was doing. B. terrestris, in any case, which here 

 rarely enters the corolla, but either probes it from without or 

 licks the corolla-less pistils, can, as has been seen, with the 

 greatest ease, put its proboscis to a like use within the tube. 

 Yet, in spite of its being under no physical disability of rifling 

 the foxglove in the ordinary manner (as in England), and though 

 it does occasionally do so, yet this bee, where I have watched it, 

 in the Black Forest, habitually obtains the nectar through per- 

 forations that have been previously made in the corolla, passing 

 by such as are not thus perforated. The presumption, I think, 

 is that it has changed its earlier habits in this respect, and, if so, 

 this is probably also the case with the two smaller kinds. Must 

 we therefore conclude that the change has been beneficial to the 

 species ? This does not appear to me to be a necessary infer- 

 ence, and, were foxgloves the only flowers, one might rather 



