scarcely likely to reach the stigma, but must be brushed off by the contortions of the bee’s body in reaching the honey. The hairy body of the bee, coated with pollen, goes next to perhaps an older flower of the columbine. Heedless of any change in the flower the bee goes straight for the honey in one of the spurs, again catches hold of the only available support in the center of the flower. But this time, instead of brushing pollen off the exposed anthers, it brushes it off its own body to the stigmas, which, at a slightly later stage than in the one just described, are branched and perfectly adapted for collecting the pollen with which the bepowdered bee can hardly avoid dusting them. Cross-fertilization is of course assured, but it seems a precarious business at best, as the number of bees with a proboscis long enough to do the work is limited. The columbine, by a kind of uncanny foresight, is so constructed that bees or other insects that try to reach the honey and are not provided with a sufficiently long proboscis, nevertheless in further attempts upon other flowers, inevitably cross-fertilize them without reaping their reward. One or two kinds of bees, as though in retaliation for this subterfuge of the columbine, make short work of the honey by biting a hole in the spur and forthwith sucking out the honey without so much as touching anther, pollen, or stigma. The reply of the columbine to this ravaging of its chief attraction is that finally, as a last resort, and by a new movement of its reproductive organs, it is self-fertilized. Here the shape of the flower, the original position of the pistil and anthers, the exposure of pollen only in such a direction that, while a chance of cross-fertilization still exists, it can hardly ever fertilize its own stigmas, all point to cross-fertilization as the plant’s greatest requirement. And yet failing this, it falls back on self-fertilization rather than endure barren sterility. [Illustration: FIG. 70.--COMMON BARBERRY The stamens of this, two at a time, drive off bees by sharp blows, thus preventing self-fertilization.] While the columbine by its spurs and other interior structure succeeds nearly always in holding a bee long enough to insure its being dusted with pollen, the common barberry bush of Europe (Figure 70), also much planted in American gardens for ornament, actually drives bees away by sharp blows of its stamens, so that self-fertilization shall not result from the visit. In this shrub the petals partly cover the stamens unless the latter are disturbed, and, in fact, the curved tip of the petals forms a kind of socket into which each of the six stamens are fitted. The position of these is such that any insect [Illustration: PLANTS OF THE PALM FAMILY, _Palmaceæ_, in Ceylon. They are the talipot palm (_Corypha umbraculifera_), the fiber from the wood of which is used in India for paper making. (_After Reinhardt. Courtesy of Brooklyn Botanic Garden._)]