220 THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. 
has its meaning, if we can only find it out, and that 
even every insignificant hair has its own proper use, and 
when we are once aware of this a flower-garden may 
become quite a new world to us if we open our eyes to 
all that is going on in it. 
But as we cannot wander among many plants to- 
day, let us take a few which the bees visit, and see 
how they contrive not to give up their honey without 
getting help in return. We will start with the blue 
wood-geranium, because from it we first began to 
learn the use of insects to flowers. 
More than a hundred years ago a young German 
botanist, Christian Conrad Sprengel, noticed some soft 
hairs growing in the centre of this flower, just round 
the stamens, and he was so sure that every part of a 
plant is useful, that he set himself to find out what 
these hairs meant. He soon discovered that they 
protected some small honey-bags at the base of the 
stamens, and kept the rain from washing the honey 
away, just as our eyebrows prevent the perspiration 
on our faces from running into our eyes. This led 
him to notice that plants take great care to keep their 
honey for insects, and by degrees he proved that they 
did this in order to tempt the insects to visit them 
and carry off their pollen. 
The first thing to notice in this little geranium 
flower is that the purple lines which ornament it all 
point directly to the place where the honey lies at 
the bottom of the stamens, and actually serve to lead 
the bee to the honey ; and this is true of the veins 
and marking of nearly all flowers except of those 
