Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1882 — Flowers and Insects. [ARTICLE]

Flowers and Insects.

All admire the colors and forms of flowers, but these are only part of their endless attractions. Close observers have found out many curious things which hasty lookers never see. That close questioner of nature. Charles Darwin, found that insects were attracted to flowers by their colors, and that different insects choose different colors. He cut the showy petals off some of the flowers in clumps in the garden, and found that bees never went near those, though very busy with the others. Sir John Lubbock put honey in glass over colored papers, and found that bees readily discriminated and always went to the blue, as they do in the flowers. Muller noticed that each kind of but-* terfly visited only its own favorite color of Lantana. Grant Allen shows that, as nearly all colored flowers depend upon insects to brush the pollen on the stigma and so cause them to produce seed, their preference for the intensest color of their choice tends to the production of the most from them, and so the full development of color. He shows, too, that at first the only color was yellow, as seen in the seed parts of nearly all flowers still, and that white, pink, red, purple and blue were developed in succession. Many flowers still open with a yellow or pink tinge, and gradually change through this series to some shade of red, or finally, blue. Blue and purple are most common in complicate corollas which only bees and butterflies penetrate easily; moths only see white flowers.— Vick’s Floral Guide. The Carson City (Nev.) Appeal says: St. Jacobs Oil is good for rheumatism, neuralgia and a thousand different ills.