280 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



book of Nature depend upon proportion and interfitting 

 by mutual accommodation, we should be making the 

 greatest mistake if we confined our attention solely 

 to the insect which has been the central object of 

 our investigation ; as well might we endeavour to realise 

 the beauties of melody by the perpetual sounding of the 

 key note, or to get harmony and contrast in colour by 

 banishing all but one. Our bee, nevertheless, will 

 claim as its right the principal part of our attention, 

 and it will be its work, rather than the botanical 

 position of the flower visited, that will determine our 

 arrangement. Many of the orders, standing widely 

 separate in systems of classification, have points in 

 common in relation to their insect fertilisers, and 

 such may, in consequence, stand side by side. 



Very many flowers, in which both anther and pistil 

 are found, prevent self-fertilisation by maturing one 

 before the other ; and, in the greater number of cases, 

 the anthers ripen first, such blossoms being called 

 proterandrous. Since we have already examined the 

 pelargonium, which is itself proterandrous, let us turn 

 our attention to the Tropaeolum majus (A and B, 

 Fig. 55), the common garden nasturtium, closely 

 resembling the pelargonium, and a member of the 

 same order. Here, as before, the nectar is contained 

 in a long spur (the nectary, n, A), so long as to 

 make the flower more useful to humble than to 

 hive bees. When the flower first opens, the style 

 is short, and the stigma immature and unreceptive ; 

 the anthers, also (a, a, A), are quite unripe, but soon 

 one or two, as seen in the Figure, begin to rise from 

 their first position beneath the flower, by an alteration 



