6o 
produced. • A species of gnat or mosquito is a fairly frequent 
visitor. It also is a very efficient pollinator. Many other insects, 
including at rare intervals hive bees, occasionally visit the flowers, 
and several of them assist in the work of pollination. Their 
names are unknown to me, and this brief notice must suffice them. 
The chief pollinator is usually found crawling about the branch- 
es of the shrub. From time to time it crawls over the back of a 
corolla, and down the middle petal to its base. I have seen 
hundreds of visits, yet only once have I seen a fly crawl down a 
side petal. Very occasionally the flies suck the bases of the 
stamens from the lower side without entering the flower. This 
fly is just the right size to brush against the cushion of the anthers 
as it descends the petal. It always collects a quantity of pollen 
on its back, when it visits a first stage flower. The hairiness of 
the fly’s back would doubtless ensure sufficient pollen adhering, 
but the pollen itself is sticky and adheres well to the smooth 
back of a brilliantly iridescent flv, which occasionally visits the 
flowers. The flies visit first and second stage flowers indifferently 
just as it happens. When a second stage flower is visited the fly’s 
back brushes against the stigma, which receives and retains pollen, 
if the fly has previously visited a first stage blossom. 
As the anthers and stigma of the flower ripen at different 
times, automagy is obviously impossible. The order of opening 
does much to secure that flowers distant from one another on the 
shrub shall be crossed. The flies often visit in quick succession 
several flowers standing close together, but these are usually all 
in the same stage, and even if they are not, only by a long chain 
of coincidences could a stigma receive pollen from a near flower 
without also receiving some from a distant one. Take for instance 
the reduced panicle of three flowers. These are, of course, very 
closely related. The central flower will probably have fallen 
before the lower lateral opens, so that crossing between these is 
unlikely. The third flower opens a day or two days after the 
secondj so that pollen might conceivably be carried from it to the 
second. In order that this may happen a fly free from pollen 
must visit No. 3, and then before visiting another pollen-bearing 
flower resort to No. 2, on the day that No. 2 reaches the second 
stage, before that blossom has been visited by any other pollini- 
ferous insect. This makes close cross-pollination highly im- 
probable. Several times I have seen a fly leave a bush and fly 
in the direction of one several yards distant ; so crossing between 
flowers on different plants occurs sometimes, and perhaps often. 
I do qot know whether foreign pollen is prepotent, but I suppose 
it is likely to be so. 
The 'pollen is cream colored. The grams are tmy— about 
37 microns in length and 25 in breadth. In shape they much re- 
semble wheat grains at first sight, even to the median furrow, 
but an end view— rarely obtained— shows the grain to be cylindri- 
