NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19382, 17 July 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

SCENTS IN FLOWERS.

BY J. DRUMMOND, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

A question raised by Mr. J. Beadle, of Dunedin, as to the relation of colour and scent in flowers is dealt with in " Flower Scent," by Mr. F. A. Hampton, Chesham Bois, England, published rccenllv. It does not disclose a very firm link between scent and colour,- but it sets out that they have the same function, namely, to attract or guide insects. The percentage of scented species, Mr. Hampton finds, if highest among white flowers, with about 25 per cent. : red flowers come next with about 9 per cent.; yellow and purple flowers are close up to the red, but very few true blue flowers have any scent wliatover. Flowers that bloom at night and in the twilight are, almost always, sweetly scented and white. Red flowers lose their colour, to human eyes at least, in a faint light, and are among the earliest to close, and, Mr. Hamptoh states, they are never visrted by night-flying moths, for which flowers have developed the most, fragrant scents. Birds do not use their sense of smell in the way insects do, he explains, and flowers habitually fertilised by them al3 n.it usually fragrant.

New Zealand's scarlet mistletoe aud the scarlet-stamened ratas —scarlet patches in a flora characterised by white and yellow flowers—have a colour that is raFe in temperate climates like New Zealand's. Pure scarlet is found oftener in South American flowers than in the flowers of any other country. Scarlet flowers there aro often fertilised by humming birds and sun birds, in whose plumago bright red often predominates. Butterflies seem to favour red or reddish flowers. A blue flower that is fragrant is rare. Bees often visit blue flowers, but smell is less important to them than colour. Most of the highlyspecialised scents, as in flowers that bloom at night are produced by plants whose leaves are scentless. Tho highest specialisation is in the orchids. Some of them show their flowers' elaborate specialisation by producing different scents at night and at day. An qrchid related to one of New Zealand's orchids has a smell of heliotrope in the morning and of lilac at night.

Mr. Hampton w r rites very interestingly on this subject. He shows that few of the finer scents of flowers are built up around one note. Most of them oontain several distinct scents, comparablo to a chord, or to a combination of chords. The perfume of the jasmine is lightened by the presence of fruit-scented substances, which gives an exquisite type of scent, but there is a good deal more in the jasmine than this, as a balsamic substance gives it a peculiar richness, and something, not yet identified, supplies tho scent's individual character. Tho violet giyes an impression of a single, delicately sweet substance shading off, through something resembling cedar wood, and only faintly sweet, into a ferny, mossy scent. The wallflower seems to contain most of the typical flower-scents; the elements of the violet, the rose, the hawthorn, and the orange blossom have been isolated from its attar.

A list of sweet scents shows that the sweetest are those of the heavy and aromatic group of flowers, and that, generally, a scent, whether animal, vegetablo or chemical, is smelt in as far as it resembles the scents of those flowers. There are a few obvious exceptions to this rale, The scents of heavy and aromatic flowers', Mr. Hampton sets out, have been evolved to match the scents of the moths and butterflies that visit them, and the scent of the moths and butterflies plays an important part in their courtship and serves to stimulate their mating instinct. People react to the same scents in the same way; and, unless this is a remarkable coincidence, they do so for the same reason. The conclusion that sweet scents uncoDsciously stir the old mating instinct has been reached, on other grounds, by almost all observers who have studied the subject. There is hardly any escape from it, apparently, when it is remembered that the use of perfume is limited to one sex among people of the Western civilisation, as the production of scent is limited to one sex in moths, butterflies, musk deer, and crocodile.

Scents play an important part in human sentiment and feeling. Tho scent of tho tea-tree's flowers, the smell of a manuka log on the fire, the smell of a flax-swamp, the collective smell of the bush, recall to New Zealanders a' store of half-forgotten memories more varied, if more vague, than the notes of the tui and the bellbird. A New Zealand lady, visiting Nice, noticed, on the evening she landed, an indefinable scent that reminded her of her home in Canterbury. The following morning, on going out, she found that, close to the beach there was an avenue of ngaios grown from seeds sent from New' Zealand. The sense of smell has not yet been used as the foundation of an art. Mr. Hampton describes the position by stating that people at present appreciate the beauty of a scent as they would appreciate a nightingale's song if they had heard no other kind of music. In the meantime, scents are a source of beauty. Messrs. Dulau and Co., London, the publishers, have forwarded a copy of Mr. Hampton's book, which opens up fresh lines of thought and study, price 6s net.

" Blood sucking pests " are the words in which Mr. H. M. Choveaux, Gisborne, describes sorno bird-ticks, on which he seeks information. His son, going home from school along the Kaiti Beach, saw a large gull in marram grass. As it could not fly, he took it home. A careful examination disclosed eleven ticks on its head and breast. They were gorged with blood. Each tick was about the size of a threepenny-piece, a mole shade in colour, with a very small head and a comparatively enormous body, flat and hard. Four days after the ticks were removed, the gull, which was fed on herrings, had sufficient strength to fly away. In captivity it became tame, and allowed the children to stroke and fondle it, but it did not move about much*, staying quietly in one place, although it was not confined. Mr. Choveaux comments: "I did not know that these birds were subject to attacks by these blood-sucking pests, this being the first case of its kind recorded during fourteen years' residence on the Kaiti* Beach."

There is not much to add to Mr. Clioveaux's brief description of ticks, except to state that they pester every species of bird and almost every species of mammal. With their relatives, the mites, they are degenerate allies of the spiders and scorpions, which have larger brains and more complex structures, arid which amaze people by their art and ingenuity. , Many species of ticks are completely parasitical. Their mouths are adapted to' sucking. They do not suck through a proboscis, as insects do, but apply the mouth direct to the wound made in the victim and the fluid is sucked by means of the expansion and contraction of the throat. In the same class with them and the spiders and scorpions are quaint little creatures known as waterbears or sloth-animalcules, seen moving about in a drop of water under a microscope. They have a very bear-like appearance. Their four pairs of clawed limbs look like small stumps. They have no abdomen but have a food canal, a brain, a mouth adapted to sucking and piercing, and sometimes a pan", of eves. Their eggs arc developed in the cast sldn of the plSnt. I»k the development of the they are known as Tardigrada.