Though she
is worn and wasted since the spring, and may easily be told from her
husband, because he is handsome and well-groomed, yet is she content
to sit and wait for the food to come her way. Now she circles from her
perch and returns. Watching her catch an insect on the way, I hear the
sharp snap of her bill, as if two pebbles had been smartly struck
together.
* * * * *
Fanning the air with gauzy wings, the honey bee comes for a feast on
the flowers of the figwort. Visiting every open blossom, he loads up
with the honey and departs in a line for his hive. Bye-and-bye a
humble-bee wanders along, quickly finding that another has drained the
blossoms of their sweets. He passes on undismayed; there are more
flowers. Over by the wire fence the tick-trefoil, desmodium, is in its
glory. Its lower petal stands out like a doorstep, and on it the
humble-bee alights. Two little yellow spots, bordered with deep red,
show him where lies the nectar. Here he thrusts his head, forcing open
the wing petals from the standard. Instantly the keel snaps down as if
a steel spring had been released. The bee is dusted with pollen, which
he carries with him to fertilize another flower. How did the flower
learn to fashion that mechanism, to construct those highly colored
nectar-guides? How many centuries of accumulated intelligence or
instinct,--call it what the scientists please,--are there behind that
action of the bee, thrusting his head just where those nectar-guides
are placed? Is the bee more sentient than the flower? Or, is the
flower which provided the nectar and placed the nectar-guides just at
the right place on the bright blossoms, as special allurements for the
senses of the bee, the more to be admired for its intelligence? One by
one the bee opens the flowers, which were so fresh and beautiful at
sunrise.
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