All the kalmias resort to a most ingenious device for com-
pelling insect visitors to carry their pollen from blossom to blos-
som. A newly opened flower has its stigma erected where the
incoming bee must leave on its sticky surface the four minute
orange-like grains carried from the anther of another flower on
the hairy underside of her body. Now, each anther is tucked
away in one of the ten little pockets of the saucer-shaped blossom,
and the elastic filaments are strained upward like a bow. After
hovering above the nectary, the bee has only to descend toward


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it, when her leg, touching against one of the hair-triggers of the
spring trap, pop! goes the little anther-gun, discharging pollen
from its bores as it flies upward. So delicately is the mechanism
adjusted, the slightest jar or rough handling releases the anthers ;
but, on the other hand, should insects be excluded by a net
stretched over the plant, the flowers will fall off and wither with-
out firing off their pollen-charged guns. At least, this is true in
the great majority of tests. As in the case of hothouse flowers,
no fertile seed is set when nets keep away the laurel’s benefac-
tors. One has only to touch the hair-trigger with the end of a
pin to see how exquisitely delicate is this provision for cross-fer-
tilization.
However much we may be cautioned by the apiculturalists
against honey made from laurel nectar, the bees themselves ignore
all warnings and apparently without evil results—happily for the
flowers dependent upon them and their kin. Mr. Frank R.
