32 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
ufactitre products useful to the plant, the waste products 
being thrown off through the glands. If this happens to 
please the ants, it is so much their good fortune. 
It is interesting to note how adroitly- the partridge 
pea, with nearly regular flowers, manages to secure 
cross-pollination. In the majority of regular flowers, like 
the oxahs and buttercup, there is a sort of indiscriminate 
pollination and the styles mav receive pollen in various 
ways. More than sixty diff-erent insects are known to 
visit the buttercup. By a very slight irregularity in the 
partridge pea's flowers, however, it has been enabled to 
direct visiting insects to the honey in such a way as to be 
most advantageous to the plant. 
This ma3^ be seen by a reference 
to the blossom. Four of the 
petals spread out flat, but the re- 
maining one, a lateral petal is 
fashioned into shallow spoon- 
shape about the stamens, while 
the pistil extends downward 
across the broad lower petal. At the base of the two 
upper petals and the other lateral one there are spots of 
crimson showing the location of the nectar. The flower 
proaches it, the liroad lower petal is obviously the easielt 
place upon which to alight. In doing this he is likelv to 
brush pollen from another tlower upon the stigma. Mov- 
ing toward the crimson spots he begins gathering the 
ntx'tar in doing which he is obliged to assume positions 
that bring his bodv into contact with the stamens ami 
thus he is loaded with more pollen for another flower. 
The curved petal seems designed to prevent insects from 
entering the tlower from that side and so passing first 
r.)ver the stamens. It is a singular fact in this connection 
that about half the flowers are thus right-handed ancl the 
] rojier transference of the pollen. 
Bmghamton, N. Y. 
