BEES AND FLOWERS. 231 
to watch one, you would find that when the bee 
alights on the broad lip /, and thrusts her head down 
the tube, she first of all knocks her back against the 
little forked tip s. This is the sticky stigma, and she 
leaves there any dust she has brought from another 
flower; then, as she must push far in to reach the 
honey, she rubs the top of her back against the anthers 
a a, and before she comes out again has carried away 
the yellow powder on her back, ready to give it to 
the next flower. 
Do you remember how we noticed at the beginning 
of the lecture that a bee always likes to visit the same 
kind of plant in one journey? You see now that this 
is very useful to the flowers. If the bee went from 
a dead-nettle to a geranium, the dust would be lost, 
for it would be of no use to any other plant but a dead- 
nettle. But since the bee likes to get the same kind 
of honey each journey, she goes to the same kind 
of flowers, and places the pollen-dust just where it is 
wanted. 
There is another flower, called the Salvia, which 
belongs to the same family as our dead-nettle, and I 
think you will agree with me that its way of dusting 
the bee's back is most clever. The Salvia (Fig. 64) is 
shaped just like the dead-nettle, with a hood and a 
broad lip, but instead of four stamens it has only two, 
the other two being shrivelled up. The two that are 
left have a very strange shape, for the stalk or fila- 
ment of the stamen (i f) is very short, while the anther, 
which is in most flowers two little bags stuck together, 
has here grown out into a long thread a b, with a 
little dust-bag at one end only. In i, Fig. 64, you 
