266 



THE YOUNG NATUEALIST. 



floral flirts are arrayed are not solely 

 designed to charm and delight the eyes 

 of man, — 



"For many a flower is born to blush 

 unseen, 



And waste its sweetness in the desert air." 



But these gorgeous garments have the 

 primary object of attracting the aerial 

 revellers as they dance their brief life 

 away in the summer sunshine. In the 

 same way, although it seems horribly 

 prosaic to degrade such an ineffable 

 exhalation as the fragrance of flowers 

 to so utilitarian a purpose as a simple 

 bid for the visits of insects, yet so it is. 

 It can easily be understood that if the 

 visits of insects are necessary or even 

 beneficial to plants, then those who by 

 emitting an agreeable perfume allured 

 or guided a greater number or diversity 

 of insect visitors would be correspond- 

 ingly benefitted. It must not be sup- 

 posed that those odours alone which 

 are pleasant to us are the only ones 

 that are solely relished by the insect 

 world, as it is well known that some 

 of the most offensive emanations to our 

 nostrils are meat and drink to other 

 forms of life, as witness the various 

 carrion and dung-flies. There can also 

 be no doubt that multitudes of subtle 

 exhalations which elude our coarse 

 corporeal senses are yet abundantly 

 manifest to the more exquisite organi- 

 zations of other animals. Thus a fox 

 can not pass along a path, however 

 gingerly he tread, but he will leave a 



trace which is sensed by the eager 

 hound for hours after ; and the inno- 

 cent and frolicsome hare, through all 

 her merry gambols, is traced unerringly 

 by the blood-thirsty weasel. 



The effect of certain odours upon 

 various animals is most curious and 

 inexplicable. Thus it is affirmed that 

 a drop of anise oil smeared on an 

 exposed surface will bring a wander- 

 ing bee from a distance of half-a-mile. 

 The strange partiality of cats for Val- 

 erian root, and their passion for rolling 

 in beds of catnip (Nepeta cataria), is 

 so well known that it has passed into 

 a gardening proverb, "If you set it 

 cats will eat it, but if you sow it the 

 cats won't know it." That is because 

 pussy seems to be uninfluenced by it, 

 except the stem or leaves be bruised, 

 which is certain to occur in the hand- 

 ling of the plants if transplanted, but 

 if sown they allow it to grow up un- 

 noticed. It scarcely boots us to en- 

 quire whether it is sight or smell which 

 guides the vulture or condor through 

 pathless miles of air to its newly fallen 

 prey. The persistence and permanence 

 of certain odours are most remarkable, 

 Byron's oft-quoted illustration at once 

 comes to mind — 



" You may break, you may shatter, the vase 

 if you will, 



The scent of the roses will cling to it still." 



Of a totally different charact er is the 

 intolerable and ineffaceable odour of 

 the shunk, which is the peculiar aver- 



