Morning journal and courier., 1891-08-03

"bothers ants like hairs, and Ii has beer
found that they are quite unable to climb
up table or a safe If little old fur or 6
strip of fiannelis gummed around the legs. y
This mode of excluding the crawling rogues
has been generally adopted by plants.
Stalks are rarely quite smooth. The stalks
are almost always clothed with fine soft
hairs or tiny bristles. The geranium, the
rose, the squash-blossom, and the petunia
are thus protected from creeping maraud-
ers, which have more difficulty in forcing
their way through the vegetable fur than
we should have in penetrating a Jungle.
Sometimes the intruder finds her way as
easy at the outset as the paths of sin pro-
verbally are, but she meets insuperable
obstacles just as she nears the goal of her
hopes. The pansy and the violet have
smooth stalks, easily climbed, but Just in
the throat of the flower, directly on the
road to the honey, is a great tuft of silky
hairs, to the ant veritable chevaux de frise.
The pansy thus saves her honey for the
bee, which can readily run her long string
proboscis through the silky tuft and into
the bottom of the neetary.
Cyceamen, snowdrop, fuchsis, and lily of
the valley are protected by the droop of
the blossoms. In vain do ants try to get
into such flowers. The curved smooth
stalks battle them. They find themselves,
like the wicked, set in slippery places, and
when they come to the downward slope
which leads to the blossom, they invariably
tumble off to the ground again. In fact,
such hanging flowers protect their honey
from ants as the swinging nests of the
weaver-bird and the creole protect their
eggs and chicks from snakes.
In aquatic plants the access of erawlers
Is prevented by the surrounding water.
Some land plants have secured to them
selves the same advantage by preparing
little basins in which to drown intruders.
The lower leaves of the common roadside
teasel are SO arranged as to form a deep
cup around the stem. Rain and dew col
lect in it, and are retained for some time,
so that the basin is seldom empty, even in
day weather, and in the little pool float
the corpses of deluded crawlers which
sought sweets. A few sorts of plants have
series of such cups, one at each joint of
the stem.
Sometimes the flowers are surrounded
and protected by sort of collar of leaves
with recurved edges. Il have assured N.Y.
SELF" says Kerner, great German natura-
list, "not only by observation, but by ex-
pertinent, that wingless insects, and notable
bly, ants, find impossible to mount upward
over such leaves as these. The little Great
ures run up the stem, and may even ira
verse the under surface of the leaves, but
the rehexed and slippery margin is more
than the best climbers among them can
get over, and if they attempt it, they invar-
iably fall to the ground" The petals of
the tiger lily curl backwards at the edges,
to the confusion of small insects which
may try to crawl up the stem and into the
flower
An invention similar to the ''sticky fly
paper" of commerce was brought out by
Nature ages ago, for some flower stalks are
glutinous, and crawlers get hopelessly
gummed down to them. The blossoms of
some varieties of sweet-william, and those
of the campion or ''catch-fy" are thus pro-
tected, and like plan of defence has been
adopted by the common purple thistles.
These flowers are rich in honey, and hence
they attract much attention from insects.
One is in bloom on the roadside opposite,
and has been entertaining bee visitors ever
since it's debut. The ants have looked, and
longed, and shifted the dainties over, for
their sense of smell is extraordinarily keen,
and they too have wished to share in the
festivities. The ascent to the flower head
is toilsome and tedious, on account of the
fuZz which clothes the stem. When the
insect had labored to its top, she finds her
self before formidable fertilization which
Nature throws around the blossoms, a
close frill of small leaves thickly set with
thorns. When she has somewhat worried
through this, and success seems secured at
last, she meets and succumbs to a worse
difficulty still The slender -throated flow
ers, which compose the thistle-head, are
set close together into deep green cup
This cup las all who have made the pretty
thistle balls know very welD is composed
of many overlapping scales. In the center
of each scale is a whitish streak. Touch it
with pin or finely pointed pencil, and you
find that it is glutinous. The ant comes
hopelessly to grief on these green scales, at
the end of her toilsome journey and in full
view of her goal. She is held fast on the
gummy streaks, and her frantic struggles
to get free only bog her more hopelessly.
The gum after awhile, stops up the little
holes in her sides, through which she
breathes, and thus size is smothered to
death. l have seen more than twenty
dead or dying ants stuck upon the
head of thistle which grew just above
their nest.
1t is certainly a little difficult to pardon
the thistle for such wholesale slaughter;
but after all, except il the estimation of
patriotic Scotchmen, the thistle is only
vegetable gamin, without culture or social
consideration, tramp with no home but
the wayside, an 1shmaelite waging war up
on the community which in turn wages
war upon it. Such conditions can scarce
ly fail to be demoralizing even to a weed.
The snap-dragon protects itself after a
manner less cruel but equally efficacious,
and the same plan has been adopted by the
familiar roadside linaria, which children
call "butter-and-eggs. The snap-dragon
has an odd-shaped two-lipped blossom
which looks something like little pouting
mouth. By pressing gently at the corners
of the mouth we can force the lips apart,
and then we see that the stamens and pis-
til are well inside in a position correspond
ing to that of the tonsils, while the honey
to continue the compartments down the
throat. The lips close firmly over the pol
len and honey, and small creeping insect
is quite unable to force an entrance be-
tween them. 1t is like the undesired guest
of fairy lore, who finds the doors barred,
and all the way beset with difficulties. The
bee is the wished-for guest, to whom all
barriers yield. When she comes to call.
she alights upon the lower lip, and her
weight causes it to drop. Then she sees
two bright golden bands running along the
palate of the flower. They guide her atten-
ton to the mouth of a deep. horn-shaped
pocket, in which the honey is stored, and
in order to reach it she must jostle the sta
mems, which stand directly in the way.
snap-dragon flower, while the lip, relieved
as silently and as strangely as the door
of rock did behind departing Ali Bahia.
Heatbea Rites