THE LIFE OF A PRIMROSE. \<j\ 
right the tube is so narrow that the dust does not 
easily fall. But, as I have said, neither kind gets it 
very easily, nor is it good for them if they do. The 
seeds are much stronger and better if the dust or pol- 
len of one flower is carried away and left on the knob 
or stigma of another flower; and the only way this 
can be done is by insects flying from one flower to an- 
other and carrying the dust on their legs and bodies. 
If you suck the end of the tube of the primrose 
flower you will find it tastes sweet, because a drop of 
honey has been lying there. When the insects go in 
to get this honey, they brush themselves against the 
yellow dust-bags, and some of the dust sticks to them, 
and then when they go to the next flower they rub it 
off on to its sticky knob. 
Look at No. i and No. 2 (Fig. 45) and you will see 
at once that if an insect goes into No. I and the pollen 
sticks to him, when he goes into No. 2 just that part 
of his body on which the pollen is will touch the 
knob; and so the flowers become what we call 
" crossed," that is, the pollen-dust of the one feeds the 
ovule of the other. And just the same thing will hap- 
pen if he flies from No. 2 to No. i. There the dust 
will be just in the position to touch the knob which 
sticks out of the flower. 
Therefore, we can see clearly that it is good for the 
primrose that bees and other insects should come to 
it, and anything it can do to entice them will be use- 
ful. Now, do you not think that when an insect once 
knew that the pale-yellow crown showed where honey 
was to be found, he would soon spy these crowns out 
as he flew along? or if they were behind a hedge, and 
