286 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



and often standing much higher than in the illustration. 

 Some years since, this plant was called in America 

 Simpson's Honey Plant, and, in a paper extolling its 

 virtues, a bee was drolly represented as flying aloft, 

 singing, " Oh, for a thousand tongues !" Mr. A. 

 Root says that, watching bees at work upon it, he 

 saw the nectar actually distilling into a blossom 

 which, just before, a bee had sucked dry, and that, 

 in less than a minute, a little bead had been formed. 

 He states that, as the bees worked, taking up this 

 thin secretion, they, even whilst humming from flower 

 to flower, discharged watery fluid ; his opinion being, 

 that by this process " they make clear, crystal honey 

 from the sweetened water, as it were/' that is exuding 

 so constantly from the nectaries of these little flowers. 

 This observation of Mr. Root is quite according to 

 the experience of myself and others. The Malpighian 

 tubes (page 61), acting as kidneys, excrete rapidly 

 any excess of water, but the manner in which the 

 latter passes from the honey sac is not yet clearly 

 explained. 



The honey from scrophularia is only of medium 

 quality, and it may be urged against the plant that its 

 appearance is not decorative, and the exposed position 

 of the nectar, which permits short-tongued insects to 

 reach it, gives too much encouragement to wasps 

 and their allies; but all bee-keepers, notwithstanding, 

 would do well to sprinkle its seeds in waste places. 



Nature's fertility of resources is boundless, and the 

 plan of making hermaphrodite flowers practically 

 unisexual, by bringing the male and female organs 

 to maturity at different periodsf is often compounded 



