PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 13 
which bloom merely at night, nature has provided means 
by the many moths which fly only at that time, and 
thus accomplish what the bees perform under the eye of 
the sun. Here insects are again subservient to the ac¬ 
complishment of this great act; for the petals of even the 
flowers which open in the night only are usually highly 
coloured, or where this not the case, they then emit a 
powerful odour, both being means to attract the re¬ 
quired co-operation. But of course our clients have 
nothing to do with these night-blooming flowers, as I 
am not aware of a single instance of a night-flying bee; 
nor are they on the wing very late in the evening, 
being before sunset, already in their nidus. In those 
occasional cases where the nectarium of the flower is 
not perceptible, if the spur of such a flower which usu¬ 
ally becomes the depository of the nectar that has oozed 
from the capsules secreting it, be too narrow for the en¬ 
trance of the bee, and even beyond the reach of its long 
tongue, it contrives to attain its object by biting a hole 
on the outside, through which it taps the store. The 
skill of bees in finding the honey, even when it is much 
withdrawn from notice, is a manifest indication of 
the prompting instinct which tells them where to seek 
it, and is a matter of extreme interest to the observer, 
for the honey-marks—the maculce indicantes —surely 
guide them; and where these, as in some flowers, are 
placed in a circle upon its bosom, as the mark upon 
that of Imogen, who had— 
“ On her left breast 
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
I’ the bottom of a cowslip.”— Shakspeare. 
they work their way around, lapping the nectar as 
