Personality of plants

PERSONALITY OF PLANTS
Nettles, Passion-flowers, and Lilies fre-
quently line their interiors with stiff, in-point-
ing hairs which oppose a most effective pali-
sade against anything that crawls, whereas a
flyer provided with a proboscis can stand on
the edge and, inserting his straw, drink up the
best soda water in plantdom. This existence
of proboscides in insects which help to cross-fer-
tilize flowers is the very finest example we have
of true mutualism. Here is a case where mem-
bers of tw,o supposedly different worlds of life
have developed highly specialized organs in
order that they might help each other.
It is said that Charles Darwin, after noting
the extraordinary length of the spur of the Orchid
Angraecum Sesquipedale of Madagascar
predicted that some day there would be found
in that country a moth with a proboscis ten to
eleven inches long. Not many years after, Dr.
Fritz Miiller verified the sagacity of the fam-
ous scientist by finding an insect exactly answer-
ing this description.
The Birth-Wort (Aristolochia Clematitis)
takes no chances with its insect visitors. In entering
it, a Bee brushes easily by the down-
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