266 



BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



The fact that sugar is present in flowers because 

 of their rapid development, would lead us to expect 

 it in greatest excess where the energy of life is 

 most intense — and this is in the ovary ; and, sugges- 

 tively, it is in this neighbourhood that the nectary is 

 far most commonly found, numerous instances presently 

 coming before us. Curious variations, however, occur. 

 Poplars, which are anemophilous and dioecious, yield 

 so much sugary secretion on the stigma, whose office 

 it is to glue down the pollen granules floating by, 

 that the stigma really becomes a nectary ; and these 

 trees, although altogether independent of insect action, 



Fig. 53.— A, Appendage of Anther, forming Nectary of Viola tricolor 

 (Pansy), Order Violacece (Magnified Twenty-four times)— nc, Nectar Cells, 

 exaggerated. B, Anther as Removed from Flower— a, Anther Cell ; 

 nc, Nectar Cells. 



yet yield a restricted quantity of honey : in some, the 

 base of the style, in others, aborted stamens, become 

 nectar-yielding ; the transuding syrupy surfaces often 

 appear on the petals, as in some species of butter- 

 cups, where they are covered with a small, flat scale, 

 behind which the nectar is formed ; or on the sepals, 

 as in the lime, so well loved by bees ; in many, 

 the petals are rolled into a tube, as in the colum- 

 bine, hellebore, aconite, &c, and the inner end of 

 the organ is the nectary ; but in some — e.g., the 

 violet — the spur merely serves to receive the nectar. 

 In Viola tricolor (the pansy), the larger and lower 



