of insects, winged and wingless. While ants might sip this nectar of ages without plants being any the better or the worse; a very different result has followed upon the visits of bees, wasps, and other hairy-coated callers. These, as they devour nectar, dust themselves with the pollen near by. Yellowed or whitened with this freightage, moth and butterfly, as they sail through the air, know not that they are publishing the banns of marriage between two blossoms acres or, it may be, miles apart. Yet so it is. Alighting on a new flower the insect rubs a pollen grain on a stigma ready to receive it, and lo! the rites of matrimony are solemnized then and there. Unwittingly the little visitor has wrought a task bigger with fate than many an act loudly trumpeted among the mightiest deeds of men! On the threshold of a Lady's Slipper a bee may often be detected in the act of entrance. In the Sage-flower he finds an anther of the stamen which, pivoted on its spring, dusts him even more effectually. [Illustration: Sage-flower and Bee] Bountifully to spread a table is much, but not enough, for without invitation how can hospitality be dispensed? To the feast of nectar the blossoms join their bidding; and those most conspicuously borne and massed, gayest of hue, richest in odor, secure most guests, and are therefore most likely to transmit to their kind their own excellences as hosts and entertainers. Thus all the glories of the blossoms have arisen in doing useful work; their beauty is not mere ornament, but the sign and token of duty well performed. Our opportunity to admire the radiancy and perfume of a jessamine or a pond-lily is due to the previous admiration of uncounted winged attendants. If a winsome maid adorns herself with a wreath from the garden, and carries a posy gathered at the brookside, it is for the second time that their charms are impressed into service; for the flowers' own ends of attraction all their scent and loveliness were called into being long before. Let us put flowers of the blue flag beside those of the maple, and we shall have a fair contrast between the brilliancy of blossoms whose marrier has been an insect, and the dinginess of flowers indebted to the services of the wind. Can it be that both kinds of flowers are descended from forms resembling each other in want of grace and colour? Such, indeed, is the truth. But how, as the generations of the flowers succeeded one another, did differences so striking come about? In our rambles afield let us seek a clue to the mystery. It is late in springtime, and near the border of a bit of swamp we notice a clump of violets: they are pale of hue, and every stalk of them rises to an almost weedy height. [Illustration: Wild Rose, Single]