FROM FLOWERS TO THE TABLE

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 303, 22 December 1926, Page 24

FROM FLOWERS TO THE TABLE

I like honey—don't you? I like to think, when 1 am eating it, that every single drop was once buried deep down in the heart of a flower, and I sometimes wonder what the flowers in the vase opposite would-say if they knew it was their honey I was eating. I don't expect they would mind, because, after all, it wasn't any good to them, so, like all sensible folk who have got goods to dispose of, they advertised. All the gay colours and graceful shapes and sweet scents are not there simply to beautify out houses and gardens, and give poets something to write about. They have a definite purpose—they are there to attract customers. And I leave you to decide whose way of advertising you like best—the lily's or the grocer's! You have only to sit down beside a snapdragon or convolvulus flower on a warm, sunny day to find out who are the customers. Some plants are ahvays taking half-holidays. You will notice a big yellow weed, rather like dandelion, -which always shuts up its flowers' shop at noon. Other flowers cater for night customers. Now, )right colours are no good at night, so they advertise with pale-coloured petals, which gleam in the darkness almost like white lamps. Do you know what the flowers ask for in return for their honey ? Have you ever smelt a lily so close that your nose was all covered with yellow dust? • I expect you have, heaps of times. This dust is very precious, indeed no plant can make its seed without it, so you can imagine how valuable it is. Now, strangely enough, all plants prefer to exchange their own pollen dust with their neighbour,, rather than use their own pollen for their own seed. So bees and other insect customers, in return for the honey, carry away, the pollen and deposit in on a neighbouring flower. They are the carriers, the errand-boys of the floral world. If you hadn't poked your nose into the flower and carried away the pollen,, a bee would probably have come and taken it away on his legs. Oh, velvet bee, you're a dus.ty fellow, You've powdered your legs with gold, says the poetry book. However, as you have taken the pollen, it is a pity you are not small enough to run along the iim flower corridor into the little honeychamber afr the end, and claim your sweet reward. There are certain horrid little insects, which, instead, of entering the flower the proper way, and taking away the pollen, break straight into the honey-chamber and steal the honey. Don't you think it's very mean of them? I don't expect you ever thought there was so much industry going on inside each quiet, gentle flower, did you? But don't you always find that it is the people who do their work with the least fuss who get through the most '! DO YOU KNOW? Ancient Egyptian surgeons had a way of hitting the patient on the head in just the proper place, and then operating while he was unconscious from the blow. An American bank gives to depositor a clock that can only be wound up by the insertion of a coin, thus compelling the saving of something every day. If we moved our legs as quickly an proportion as an ant .we should walk at the rate of 800 miles an hour. Some rivers of Siberia flow over ice many years old, and almost as solid as rock. A tributary of the Lena has a bed of pure ice more than nine feet thick. The best way -to avoid hitting your fingers when driving a nail is to hold the hammer in both hands. _An institute in London keeps' 2000 different varieties of germs on hand for sale. ' a Volcanoism ds not deep-seated, its b£r\Z *? ng ksS tl,an teu miles beneath the earth's surface. n,™7 sta "f ician ' bairns that the total UnSS^LS" , "2 ordina »ces in the Lmted States exceeds two miliums