ae 
tHE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 39 
list, viz., Desmodium, Sesbania, and Crotalaria, and two 
exotic genera, Mimosa and Medicago. Dr. Bancroft inci- 
dentally remarks (p. 52) that, so far as he was aware, his 
record was the first that had been made in Australia of 
root diseases of bacterial origin. 
OBSERVATIONS ON BEES. 
(By T. Steel, F.L.S.) 
Some months ago there appeared in the columns of 
one of the Sydney morning newspapers some correspon- 
dence on the effects of the blossoms of the garden poppy 
on bees. One correspondent in particular stated that 
these blossoms had a deleterious effect on bees, causing 
their death a few hours after visiting the blossoms, the 
inference being that either the pollen or the nectar of the 
poppy contained something of a nature poisonous to the 
bee. He described his having caught a number of bees 
on poppy blossoms and confined them in cages, and, as a 
control, confined other bees captured just as they left the 
hives. He stated that the bees captured on the poppy 
blossoms all died within a few hours, and that those taken 
from the hive did not. 
Being interested in the subject, I made, during the 
past spring and summer, a large number of observations. 
I caught bees in poppy blossoms, also those visiting a 
number of other plants, such as sweet peas, roses, dahlias, 
larkspur, ete., also pumpkins and the common rib-herb 
(Plantago lanceolata). As a control, a number of bees 
were captured on the ledge of a bee-hive just as they were 
leaving the hive in the morning, and therefore before 
they had visited any flowers. These were confined in 
some cases under a large glass bell-jar, and in others, in 
a roomy cage made of a butterfly net. In every case the 
bees, including those taken as they left the hive, died after 
a few hours’ confinement, some within a couple of hours, 
others at varying times, up to seven or eight hours. I 
also noticed that bees entering a house and flying to the 
windows, on which they remained crawling, all died with- 
in the same limits of time. In most cases the bees were 
