Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-11-20
Binds mi
How the Birds Give Color and Perfume 70
Tropica FlOwerr,

% Tropical i
Humming birds are not by origin
honey suckers. They are in the main
insect caters and spider hunters, end
they dive among the flowers, not in
search of the nectar itself, but of the
small flies and other miscellaneous in
sect rifraff that the honey attracts in
to the deep-throatcd hectares. At
least, this was their early aboriginal
habit, for the humming bird is by de-
scent a tropical swift, a modified form
of the dingy, black-coated, swallow
like creatures that hawk open mouthed
for moths and flies around our own
church steeples on calm August even
ings; and young humming birds, in the
callow nesting stage, refuse to this day
the offered allurements of sugary syrup,
and insist intlexibly upon their heredit-
airy fare of plump insects and we'll fat
tened spiders. They remain still at the
swift level of humming bird develop
ment. But the adult birds, accustomed
always to find their food in full blown
blossoms, intermixcd with nectar, have
come at last to regard the honey as part
of their proper mean of subsistence,
and to demand it as regularly as civil
lied humanity demands its beer with
its bread and beef.
At first, no doubt, the primitive hum
ming bird only went to look in flowers
for insects because he knew he was
sure of finding them there; but now,
grown accustomed to take his sweets
and meat together, like currant jelly
with hare, he is no longer satisfied with
a purely %carnivorous or in~sectivorous
diet, but requires to have it properly
sweetened. Practically, however, all
these flower-haunting birds have now
acquired the precise habits of bees or
butterflies and there are many hum
ming birds which it is almost, if not
quite, impossible to distinguish on the
wing from certain species of humming-
bird hawk moth. The natives in some
parts of South America have Il theory,
indeed, that the moth is only, as it
were, the iarva of the bird, and that as
it grows older it gradually acquires
bones and beak, just as a human in
FAINT progresses slowly from the soft
and pulpy condition of babyhood to the
angular %osteos;ty of maturer years.
While the birds have thus adapted
themselves to the flowers, by acquiring
long and darting barhed tongues. the
flowers for their part have as usual re-
paid the compliment by adapting Them
selves in return to the habits of the
birds, and acquiring correspondingly
deep corollas. 1t is the great object in
life of every intelligent and well-regu-
lated plant species to specialize itself
for securing the visits of some one par
ticular insect or bird visitor, because
by so doing it economists the useless
pilferiug of its honey by stray winged
thieves. and gets its embryo seeds prop
erly fertilized by a creature peculiarly
adapted to- perform that friendly office
for itself alone. No sooner did hum
ming birds and tories begin to devote
themselves exclusively to flowers than
the. flowers began to devote themselves
exclusively to the cumming birds and
tories. They heightened their tubes
out of ali proportion to the tongues of
nectar-sucking insects, sc, that only the
favored birds themselves could obtain;
access to the coveted honey with its ac-
companying swarm of flies and beetles.
At the same. time they Lent their
stamens and pistils into such forms
that they came in contact with the
birds bill, and enabled it to transfer
the pollen of one flower to the sensitive
surface of the next visited, thereby inn
ORIGINATING the seeds in the ovary.
OF course, birds being. so much larg-
er than bees, the flowers specially al
fected by them, such as the huge tubu.
lar Brugmannsiast of our gardens. have
to- be much bigger and.handsomer than
those which merely lay themselves OUT
to attract the notice of the minor in
sects. In every 8 the tube of the
flower exactly corresponds in length to
the beak and tongue of the special
humming-bird or sun-bird or lorv told
Off to do duty in fertilizing its seeds.
The broad mouth of the blossom in
most of these species is intended for
the bird to poise in on its fiuttering
wings and insert its head; the narrow
neck in which the flower ends below is
intended to keep out intrusive moths
and butterflies, not adapted to the fer
%tilization of the particular species.
There ear be little doubt that the
superior richness and beauty of the
tropical blossoms is largely dependent
upon the slow, but long exerted select
i've action OF the humming-birds, the
honey-suckers and the UNDERSTANDING
parrots. By always visiting and fer
tilizing the largest and handsomest
blossoms, they have affected at last tho
whole standard Of the equatorial flora.
Darling with the rapidity of lightning
from flower to flower, wherever a great
patch of crimson or orange attracts
their keen little eyes, they are really
helping to perpetuate the finest and
handsomest types of flowers, and so
maintaining and to somee extent increas-
ing the marvellous beauty of the trop-
ical vegetation.-PaU Mall Gazette.
Clarence said Miss Penelope
Waldo, Boston young woman.
didn't hear you say that every time
vnHr 00 <Jo r,~ - 49,