INSECTS AND FLOWERS IN INDIA. 
223 
The habits of the flower-visiting shorter tongued bees are for India 
quite unstudied. Halictus is common enough in some places and H 
senescens is recorded from Behar as having some connection with thepolli 
nation there of cotton. It is worthy of passing remark that in Europe 
some of these short-tongued bees have been found to have the very 
closest inter-relations with particular species of plants. For instance, 
Bryonia is visited by a Halictus and by little else, and the Halictus hardly 
visits anything else, but the Bryonia flowers. The tongue of Prosopis 
is very short indeed. 
Among the wasps, we find both long and short-tongued species ; Ody- 
nerus for instance is long-tongued, Vespa short-tongued. Vespa seems 
to be not unimportant in the pollination of Chiretta ( Swertia Chirata ) 
in Sikkim. The long-legged, slow-moving Polistes of the plains go to 
exposed honey. Sphegids, Pompilids and Scoliids may b? seen in 
India at exposed honey. > 
Of Lepidoptera there are many common plains species which doubt¬ 
less do a considerable amount of flower pollination, e.g., Danais , Terias , 
etc. They seem to require a good deal of liquid during the day but often 
much of it is merely water taken from a wet mud bank. The least in¬ 
consistent in habits are perhaps the Sphingids, which are not uncommon¬ 
ly to be seen flower visiting both by day and by night. Possibly some 
HesperMs are also in a measure not inconsistent in their flower visiting. 
Diptera in the plains seem to play but a small part in flower polli¬ 
nation. It is different in the Himalayas where large Bombyliids join the 
Bombi in going to rather specialised flowers, and where out of the Syr- 
phidce, Rhingia and Eristalis are not uncommon. Tachinids also have 
some importance in the hills, but perhaps not in the plains. It is to be 
assumed that our large evil-smelling Araceae attract muscids, but 
so far no thorough investigations have been made. A little beetle 
crawls into a foul-smelling Typhonium ? which grows in Lower Bengal. 
Bibionids are often common on flowers in the hills and Anthomyids 
not frequent both in the hills and the plains. 
Of the relations of other insects to flowers there is really nothing 
to remark : and it may be added here that there is an uninvestigated 
field in the study in India of flower pollination by birds. Birds at times 
visit for honey, and at times for small insects lying hid within the 
flowers. Keeble’s account of his observations on bird-pollination 
of Loranthacece in Ceylon (Trans. Linn. Soc. Bot. V, pp. 91-96), and a 
few remarks by Lieutenant-Colonel D. D. Cunningham in his ‘ ‘Indian 
Friends and Acquaintances,” p. 130, comprise all that has been put on 
record. (The student should also consult Mr. I. H. Burkill’s papers in 
the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 190(3, onwards.) 
