NATURAL HISTORY QUERIES 
137 
In our gardens the flowers of the polyanthus are much frecjuented by bees, 
which sometimes fly towards a primrose near, but discovering their mistake 
when within an inch or two, rarely light upon it, and hardly ever attempt to 
probe it for honey, which is beyond their reach in almost all cases — there 
being only one bumble bee, Bombm hortorum., with long enough tongue to 
reach the nectar at the bottom of the tube. 
If in the simple examination mentioned in last month’s issue, which took me 
half an hour, 40 per cent, ol the primroses were found to be tenanted by small 
beetles in the tubes, is it not reasonable to sup|iose that most of the remaining 
60 per cent, were tenanted by them at some time or other ? May it not also 
be concluded that these beetles cannot find their way from one end of the tube 
to the other without causing fertilisation, and in many cases self-fertilisation ? 
All the beetles found by me on .^pril 15 were of the same kind, EuphaUntm 
frimuhe, of which Professor K. E. Weiss, in his article in Nature Notes of 
June, IQ04, says, that “ by creeping about within the flowers they become 
completely dusted over with pollen, and must be powerful agents in self- 
pollination.” 
“Pollination of the Primrose” in Nature Notes for April, 1904, has been 
of much help to me in trying to rob this flower of its secrets. 
Ed.mu.nu Titos. Daube.ny. 
P.S . — Bombus hortorum and other bees may often be seen flying about 
a beautiful bed of primroses close to my house, but they are invariably in 
quest of other flowers that grow among the primroses. I do not remember 
having seen Bombus hortorum visit a primrose. 
263 . Primroses. — There is a wood near here, and, I believe, another 
near Althorp, where white primroses are not uncommon, and some from the 
former locality flower profusely in my garden. Otherwise I only once remember 
finding a clump of white ones in West Sussex, where one occasionally finds the 
pink variety of the bluebell. Last year my brother picked a fine primrose here 
with four petals, and a sister-in-law has just told me that this spring on the same 
day she picked primroses with four, six and seven petals respectively in a wood 
in Kent. The sparrow is certainly one of the birds which plucks off the heads, 
apparently for mischief alone. W. A. Shaw. 
NATURAL HISTORY QUERIES, 
54 . Scarcity of Nightingales. — Is there not a scarcity of nightingales 
this year ? They are usually more or less abundant in this neighbourhood, but 
as yet I have not heard more than one, or at the most two, and that was three 
or four weeks ago. Other residents say the same, and it is a sad loss to the 
“ amenities” of a beautiful district. 
Possibly the so-called “sparrow clubs” are the cause. I have heard that 
children are encouraged to bring the heads of small birds, by no means of 
sparrows only, and that they receive rewards proportioned to the number 
brought ; and a friend living six miles off tells me that the children there 
deliberately and systematically take the young birds of all kinds from their nests 
and twist their heads oft'. 
Buxted, A. L. H. 
Jime 5 , 1905. 
55 . Humming-bird Hawk-moth.— On May 17 a humming-bird moth 
was hovering over a yellow azalea in my garden. It has not reappeared. Was 
it not an early visitor ? 
Milverton, Somerset, 
"Vune 6. 
