1887] The Milkweeds. 611 
which they are attached: has had time to fly to another flower. 
On reaching this new flower the hair bearing the pollen will be 
guided into the slit, and, too large to be drawn through, will be 
detached, and so left in the exact position to send the pollen- 
tubes into the stigma. | 
Insects visiting the flowers often have cause to rue the visit. 
Honey-bees have often been found. dead, with many pairs of 
glands or pollen-masses attached to them; for, visiting the 
flowers and extracting numbers of the masses, they become 
entangled, and finally perish of starvation. One entomologist, 
having found a beetle with many pairs of 
stalks and pollinia upon the hairs of its 
tarsi, sent a drawing of it to a scientific 
journal, and referred to it as possessing 
peculiar appendages, the like of which he 
had not before seen, and which he sup- 
posed to belong really to the hairs to 
which they adhered. But it was soon 
pointed out that, instead of natural append- 
ages, they were those acquired in pere- 
grinations over clusters of Milkweed blos- 
” soms. Fic 6.—Leg of beetle 
Notwithstanding the numbers of insects vets $30 parag attached 
frequenting the flowers, it is noticeable 
that only a few of them produce seed; for the pollen-masses 
must be removed from the sacs and must be inserted into the 
slits before the stigma can be fertilized. Sometimes, it is true, 
the grains, while yet in the sacs, send tubes into the stigmas; 
but these tubes are inoperative, and do not enable the flower to 
‘seta pod. It is quite rare to find more than two pods produced 
out of a bunch of, perhaps, fifty flowers; and often there will be 
only one or two pods on the whole plant. But what the plant 
lacks in the number of pods it makes up in the number of seeds 
found in each one. These seeds are packed so closely and 
tightly together that a single pod contains an immense number. 
They are provided, po, with such an admirable appendage for 
being wafted through the air, and this serves its purpose so 
effectually, that even a few pods are sufficient to stock a large a 
_ tract of country. ar 
-The peepiiar arrangement of the pallescarsise i in masses A 
