Seasonal Notes. — August 1 6 1 



have been unable to get at the nectar below. Let your flower, 

 now slit open, lie at rest a few minutes, and you will then find 

 that some at least of these beetles have taken advantage of 

 your opportune help and passed down to the bottom. Clearly 

 it was the impediment just described which hindered them. 

 What object is served by thus preventing intruders ? It is 

 perhaps, difficult to say, further than that it protects the 

 honey. It certainly does not either prevent or encourage 

 fecundation, for both stamens and pistil are in the mouth of 

 the corolla and high above the constriction. It may be that 

 the insects, unable to get down the tube to which they have 

 been attracted by the odour of honey, busy themselves at the 

 mouth amongst the anthers, and thus secure the spreading of 

 the pollen upon the adjacent stigma. 



The tobacco flower is by no means the only one in which the 

 condition referred to may be found. 



In some well-known instances a reverse arrangement occurs, 

 and the insects, after admission to the deeper parts of the 

 flower are there imprisoned. This occurs in the Birthwort 

 (Aristolochia Clentatitis). The stamens and pistil in it are 

 enclosed in a perianth which is lined with hairs which all 

 point downwards. They thus permit the entrance of an 

 insect, but prevent its escape until the flower withers. In 

 the meantime, and probably by the aid of the imprisoned 

 insect, the pollen has been shed upon the stigma. Tipida 

 pennicornis, a. " Daddy-long-legs," is the insect thus maltreated. 



At this season the attention of the field-observer is arrested 

 by numerous examples of deformed and discoloured leaves. 

 Some leaves, as in the case of the common dock, are much 

 disfigured, large areas being produced involving, perhaps, half 

 the leaf, which look like thin brown paper. In others, winding 

 and not wholly inelegant lines of white, curve about the leaf 

 and leave the intervening portions green. Such may now 

 be seen in the leaves of the honeysuckle, and will soon be 

 still better shown in those of the bramble. In all instances 



