1880. | Botany. 363 
fertilization by them, like the “palosabre” (Erythrina, sp.) de- 
scribed by Belt! The malvaviscus mentioned above does not 
fruit in the North where I have seen it cultivated, and experi- 
ments made a few years ago on a plant in Brooklyn showed that, 
in that case at least, artificial crossing between different flowers on 
the same plant did not lead to the production of fruit. Whether 
this is always the case with the plant as cultivated in the North 
I do not know, but it fruits abundantly in Southern Alabama, 
where it is perfectly hardy; and yet I could not learn that there 
was a plant within several miles of the one on which my observa- 
tions were made, so that the crossing effected by the birds was 
probably between flowers of one plant. This difference may be 
due to the difference in climate. 
The species which have been mentioned are all that are record- 
ed in my notes, though birds were seen to visit many others, and 
a planter laughingly said to me one day, “You'll have to note 
every conspicuous flower if you want a full list of those visited 
by humming birds,” reminding me of what Delpino says in his 
Ulteriori Osservazioni, P. 11, Fas. 11, p. 336, “ According to Gould, 
to number all of the flowers frequented by this species would be 
equivalent to repeating the name of half the plants of North 
America.” — William Trelease. 
Carnivorous Hasirs or Bees.—Apropos of the asserted kill- 
ing and eating, by hive bees, of moths captured by the bladder- 
flower, Physianthus, I would like to call the attention of readers 
of the Natura.ist to the following statement by Kirby and 
Spence in their Introduction to Entomology, Letter xx, p. 384 0 
the seventh edition: “Though the great mass of the food of 
bees is collected from flowers, they do not wholly confine them- 
Selves to a vegetable diet; for, besides the honeyed secretion of 
with the ants, upon particular occasions they will eat the eggs of 
: Funai as Insect DESTROYERS.—Two very interesting observa- . 
tions, bearing on one of the methods taken by nature to prevent an 
Over-production of insects injurious to vegetation, are recorded in 
the introductory portion to the Thirty-first Report of the New 
York State Museum of Natural History: One of these is in re- 
Sard to the destruction, by a fungus, of the “seventeen-year 
locust,” which, it will be remembered, made one of its septem- 
decennial visitations in 1877. This fungus, which Mr. Peck de- 
! Naturalist in Nicaragua, p. 130. 
? Abbe Boisier, quoted in Mill’s on Bees, 24. 
* Schirach, 45. Huber, 1, 479. 
