BEES AND FLOWERS. 233 
comes to look for honey, and as she goes into No. 3, 
she rubs against the stigma and leaves upon it the dust 
from another flower. 
Tell me, has not the Salvia, while remaining so 
much the same shape as the dead-nettle, devised a 
wonderful contrivance to make use of the visits of 
the bee ? 
The sweet white violet (Viola blandd) or the dog 
violet (Viola canina), which you can gather in any 
meadow, give up their pollen-dust in quite a different 
way from the Salvia, and yet it is equally ingenious. 
Everyone has noticed what an irregular shape this 
flower has, and that one of its petals has a curious 
spur sticking out behind. In the tip of this spur 
and in the spur of the stamen lying in it the violet 
hides its honey, and to reach it the bee must press 
past the curious ring of orange-tipped bodies in the 
middle of the flower. These bodies are the an- 
thers a a, Fig. 65, which fits tightly round the stig- 
ma s, so that when the pollen-dust p, which is very 
dry, comes out of the bags, it remains shut in by the 
tips as if in a box. Two of these stamens have 
spurs which lie in the spur of the flower, and have 
honey at the end of them. Now, when the bee 
shakes the end of the stigma s, it parts the ring of 
anthers, and the fine dust falls through upon the 
insect. 
Let us see for a moment how wonderfully this flow- 
er is arranged to bring about the carrying of the 
pollen, as Sprengel pointed out years ago. In the first 
place, it hangs on a thin stalk, and bends its head down 
so that the rain cannot come near the honey in the 
