NATURE NOTES 
176 
541 . Bee Stings. — In No. 497 it is asked, “Do bees lose their stings?” 
It is a matter of common experience to those who have been stung by hive bees 
that the sting is left in their cuticle. At times I have had my leather gloves 
covered with the stings of irate bees. The sting of the hive bee is serrated, and 
when left in any object death must ensue, because in its struggles to liberate 
itself some of the insect’s entrails are torn away. If, however, a bee inserts its 
sting into something that does not retain it, such as a woollen glove, death does 
not result. At certain times of the year weak swarms are often attacked and 
robbed by other bees. In the ^ght that takes place many ate killed by being 
stung to death ; but the one that kills the other does not die, because it is able 
to withdraw its sting from the body of its victim. In killing the drones in the 
autumn, the worker bee does not die from stinging her male relatives. The sting 
of the wasp, not being so serrated as that of the bee, is more easily withdrawn, 
and is seldom left in the wound that it inflicts. I have been stung a dozen times 
in succession by a bumble-bee without its losing its sting. In its serration the 
sting of the bumble-bee is more like that of the wasp than of the bee that makes 
our honey. 
South-acre, Swaffham. EDMUND Thos. Daubeny. 
542 . Bud Destruction. — The plants of Sea Thrift referred to in Query 
123 (p. 117), as having their buds nipped off, were either suffering from the 
attacks of sparrows or caterpillars. Those cases in which the insides of the buds 
were missing were not, I think, brought about by birds, but may have been due 
to insects or to the weather, or some change in the soil, or an unhealthy condition 
of the plants. It is difficult to tell without examination of the actual plants. 
Had birds been the culprits in the case of Mr. Evans’s plants, the buds would 
have been obviously torn and spoilt, but the fact that only the centres, i.e., the 
flowers, were “eaten away ” points to some constitutional cause, since an insect 
would have left some trace. I have had similar cases in my own plants of Thrift, 
and could never find out the reason, but noticed that the buds were always so 
in sickly or dying plants. I may say, incidentally, that much of the damage done 
by sparrows in gardens may be averted by putting out large flower-pot saucers 
of water, for them to drink at, all the year round. 
Hale End, Chingford. C. Nicholson. 
543 . What is a Perennial ? — Mr. Hastie (p. 154) raises a question 
which has no doubt, wholly or in part, puzzled many people, and, so far as 
the terms “annual” and “biennial” are concerned, is not very satisfactorily 
settled in books on botany and gardening. I will try to explain the terms as 
I understand them, merely premising (l) that I am dealing with the terms 
only and not their application to this, that, and the other specific plant, and 
(2) that certain foreign plants are perennial in their native country, but only 
annual or biennial when grown in this. An “annual,” then, is a plant which 
germinates from seed, attains full growth, flowers, and drops its seeds within 
the space of a single year, by which, I understand, is meant the twelve months 
from January to December inclusive ; in this case the seed lies dormant through 
the winter and germinates in spring. A “ biennial ” germinates from seed 
dropped, say, in summer and grows up to a certain point, at which it remains 
throughout the winter ; growth recommences in the spring, and flowering and 
seeding take place in due course. The difference between an annual and 
a biennial is clearly that the former passes the winter as a seed, the latter as 
an immature plant ; the resemblance is that neither of them can live longer 
than twelve months (approximately), and seeds are the only method by which 
the species can be continued in a stale of Nature. A “ perennial,” on the 
contrary, lives continuously on year after year, and whether it grows up each 
year from the same stock is quite immaterial ; it is substantially the .same 
plant, in that there is no complete destruction of its individuality by death. 
It will thus be seen that the method by which a plant reproduces itself does not 
directly affect the question under consideration, which relates only to the plant 
itself and its duration of life. I am aware that the above explanation is not 
always in accordance with the statements in botanical books that such and 
such a plant is a biennial or an annual, but that is not the fault of the 
explanation ! For instance, all the small wild species of Geianium are usually 
