THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3584, 21 November 1922, Page 59

THE SKETCHER.

the flower AND THE BE£. a VERY IMPORTANT LINK IN EVOLUTION. By Pbofessor J. Arthur Thomson. One of the main trends of evolution nas certainly been to link living creatures together, and one of the most important linkages in history has been that between flowers and useful insect visitors, such as bees. Useful because the bees, m getting po.len and nectar for their own purposes, bring about the crossleruhsation of flowers. And this crossiertdisation improves both the quantity and the quality of the seed. Throughout long ages the flowers and the bees, if m e may keep to bees for a moment, have evolved together, and they are now fitted to one another' as hand to glove. In many cases they are nowadays indispensable to one another, for many of the flowers are so specialised that thev cannot be fertilised except by bees; while, on the other side, bees are so highly specialised that they would all come to an end if there were no flowers that produced nectar. Virgin-birth.— I his linkage, like many another, must in some measure determine the lines of lurther evolution ; 'for the flower' cannot safely change in a direction that- would shut the door on its visitors; and the bees cannot safely change in a direction that would lessen their success with the flowers. The linkage is part of the wellwoven web of life, and it tends, like *oe«u linkages of a profitable kind, to keep tilings from sliding back. One must be cautious, however, for it is possible that without insects to pollinate them flowers might fall back on virgin-birth (or parthenogenesis), and that seems to be occurring in such very successful flowers as danaeiions. They still produce pollen, but it is not used. Bees as “good botanists.’’ —

Inside the seed-box of a flower there are possible seeds or ovules, each containing a single microscopic egg-cell. The possible seed will not become a real seed, that is to say, an embryo plant, unless this eggcell is fertilised. Similarly, no one expects a chick to come out of tile unfertilised egg of a hen, and the egg must remain unfertilised if there is no cock in the yard. The fertilisation of the microscopic egg-cell of the plant depends on the dusting of the tip or stigma of the pistil with appropriate pollen-grains produced by the stamens of another flower of the same kind. Oases of self-pollination, as in peas, oats, rice, are in a minority ; in most cases the pollen is carried from another blossom by insects or by the wind. A suitable pollen-grain, caught on the moist surface of the stigma, sends out a long .tube which grows down to the ovule, and a male element—little more than one of the nuclei—in the pollen-tube enters into intimate orderly union with the microscopic egg-cell. In the maidenhair tree and a few other primitive seedplants the male element is a freely moving cell, as it is in mosses and ferns and in most animals. In all ordinary flowering plants the male element is a more or less passive cell borne to the egg-cell by the growth of the pollen-tube. Hut in all cases the essence of fertilisation is the same, the intimate union of male-cell and egg-cell ; this is the beginning of a new individual. But this is only an introduction to what we wish to get at—namely, an answer to the difficulty which must arise in the inquiring mind: llqw is it that the bees do not mix up pollens hopelessly as they pass from flower to flower? If a humblebee dusts the pistil of a red-clover with the pollen of an aconite, the flower will not be “much forrader.’’ The answer is threefold. )ome insects are specialists; they know their flowers “like good botanists,” and they keep to them consistently. But, secondly, even when the insect is not a specialist it tends on a given journey or forenoon to keep to one kind of flower. What Aristotle observed, that bees do not fly at random from one kind of blossom to another, has been amply confirmed. The mouth-parts are suited for particular kinds of flowers; thus the hive-bee’s tongue is not long enough to reach the nectar of the ordinary corolla of the red clover, which is easily reached by the humljle-bee. News From Scouts. —

Moreover, of a summer morning hivebees pay considerable lieed to the tidings brought in by th% scouts, who inform them in some way or other which flowers are most profitable at the time. It must l»e remembered that true bees deal very intimately with the pollen-grains: they moisten them with their mouth and put cakes of them in a depression or basket on one of the joints of the hind-legs, and the next joint is enlarged into a hairy brush. I’lie pollen that is of use to the next flower is the loose dust entangled on various appropriate parts of the bee’s body, appropriate in tbe sense that they knock against the stigma and deposit the grains there. Finally, it appears that foreign pollen dusted on to the stigma usually dies; only the proper kind of pollen sends out a pollen-tube. Add these three points together—(l) the specialisms of insect visitors, (2) their consistency on a given journey, and (3) the specificity of the pollen, which only grows on its appropriate soil (the stigma of its kind), and you have the answer to the nuestion : \\ hy* is there not a hopeless mixture of pollens ? flow do the Insects “Know?’’— Hut the next question is: How are infects guided to the profitable flowers, or how do they recognise them as the flowers they are out to visit on that journey? The answers given to this question have been so discrepant, some authorities laying emphasis on colour-sense, and others on the sense of smell, and others on memories which associate certain shapes and textures with abundant nectar, and so on, that we are glad to avail ourselves of .Professor Bouviers recently published

“Psychic Life of Insects” (Fisher Unwin, 192 a), which takes a critical survey of the known facts. Many observers have concluded that bees pay most frequent visits to flowers (or even baited paper) with gaudy colours; hut there has rarely been any firm discrimination between colour as such and the brilliance of the reflecting surface. What counts for most is conspicuousness against the green background, and bees are in some measure colour-blind ! Uncovered flowers attract more visitors than the same flowers next door but shaded by leaves; highly coloured flowers with slight odour, like dahlias, attract more visitors than their fragrant unconspieuqus neighbours, such as mignonette; conspicuous flowers get far more visitors than honey in a beaker next door. The eonspicuousness may depend on form and size as well as colour, as is shown by the attentions some butterflies pay to the big white flowers of the field convolvulus. The visits cease when the corolla is removed, though the nectaries remain intact. Yet after some time various kinds of insect visitors undoubtedly learn to come to honey-flowers whose petals have been cut off. This is a very suggestive fact. “Never Trust to Colour.’ — Then there is fragrance, which certainly counts for much among hive-bees, for they are very richly endowed with smelling hairs. Darwin said that “bumblebees and honey-bees are good botanists” because they recognise the same kind of flower although the colour is different. Thev obey the' advice of ,the father of botany: “Never trust to colour.’’ It 's probably the flower's characteristic perfume, mainly due to essential oils, that enables the bees to become “good botanists.” Kernel: saw' a convolvulus tiawkmoth fly straight to the invisih’e flowers of a honeysuckle over a hundred yards away. For a long range, then, where colour, brilliant surface, and shape cannot count as guides, certain insects, like bees and moths, may be attracted by odours diffusing through the air. When they come near, the other influences may tell'. On the other hand a bee attracted to a flower by its conspicuousness may turn away when it detects the perfume. The Role of Learning.— The question of the guidance of insect visitors to useful flowers has got into some confusion because different insects are differently attracted, and different flowers have different advertisements. Each case must be studied by. itself. But there is more than that. Too little attention has been given to the capacity insects have of profiting by individual experience. They are not altogether instinctive automata*; they are intelligent learners. They can attend and they can remember. They can build up associations between certain advertisements (colour, shape, fragrance), and good meals. Forel showed that oees learn to force their way into flowers covered up by leaves; Perez showed that bees learn to visit the scarlet pelargonium, which they dislike, provided a little honey is introduced for a while into the corollas ; Rouvier and others have shown that hivebees learn to profit by slits and holes which other bees have made as short cuts to the nectaries; and many observers have noticed that bees learn to give up visiting flowers which promise well hut are in reality disappointing. No doubt bees are dominated by their hereditary inborn instincts, but we fail to make sense of their behaviour unless we also give them credit for an intelligent criticism of advertisements. —John o’ London’s Weekly.

IS CONTEMPORARY BRITISH LITERATURE WORTH WHILE? —Contemporary British Literature. —- “Under this title a volume has been recently published as a ‘tool for students and studious readers,’ ” savs the Glasgow Herald. “It is, in short a literary Who’s Who, with lists of works, suggestions for reading, and notes and questions intended to direct the reader’s thought. Our first feeling oil opening and glancing through the book was one of sincere commiseration for the students. We turned to the indexes and looked at them as our generals must have looked at the Hindenburg line. “We counted: 84 poets, 54 dramatists, 143 novelists, 45 writers of essays, 41 critics. Picture the young student, after having hewn his way through our past literature and cleared a path of some sort from Chahcer to Dickens, picture him after emerging from the iungle of the nast, confronted by this wilderness of the living. A Wilderness of the Living.— “The poets we knew save one, and the dramatists except some eight or nine, whose works have not appeared in book form; but it is one thing to take these as they come in the procession of the years and another to attack them as they pour down on you en masse, an unregimented horde claiming to he unclassifiable, but whom it is vour duty to pick out and bring down individually and then label as best you may. “And even when you have done that you cannot be assured that you have done your work with absolute conscientiousness, for behind these 84 of partially assured reputation (or repute stretch the dim ranks of the unknown --For the preface assures us that a recent list of poets who have been published since 1912 contains more than a. thousand names and that there are at least a thousand more. A Thousand Poets.— “Why, even from the 84 are omitted the names of Violet Jacob. Edmund Blundell, Edward Shanks and Gilbert Frankau, all four of whom are as distinctive in stale as most of the others, while we could add to tlie list a. score more important than Stella Benson and Viola Meynell. The. difficulty of drawing up any such list is obvious. A rocket is for its brief season as brilliant as a star, and its quality of brightness raav he worth examining ; moreover, our eagerness to discover some i.ew star induces us to

perceive starriness in the rocket. This is the illusion to be guarded against when using the lists of studies and reviews which follow the lists of works. “As often as not these are the record of temporary impressions. The comparative brilliance of the novel of the season will depend on the drabness of that season, and one has only to remember how the London critics ‘ dredged the dictionary for adjectives’ when they first hailed Stephen Phillips to hesitate to accept contemporary criticism as ultimate judgment. ‘ The Passing of Noyes ’ might well be made the title of a satire on reviewers, but the student will find ample material for considering it in whichever way pleases him.

- When We Come to the Novelists. — “But it is when we come to the novelists that the heart fails. One hundred and forty-three, and not a word about Marie Corelli, Hall Caine, of of the author \ of ‘ When Winter Comes ’ I Not that we [ object to the omission of these writers, ! but a consideration of the qualities of j the ‘ befit sellers ’ is as difficult as any I that falls to the critic’s lot, and must be faced by him dispassionately and without prejudice. In what scales shall we weigh a bloodless art and a full-blooded crudeness? Vitality -we demand, art we have a right to expect; but how distinguish between life and melodramatic exaggeration of it, between art and perfect artifice? “To help us in this inquiry our book plans a course of study in more than a score of novelists, with hints for comparison of those who work a similar vein. That Barrie, Bennett, Conrod, Galsworthy-, Hardy, Kipling, George Moore, and AVells should be regarded as worthy of special study was inevitable; but the young student has also to take into as serious account Beresford. Cannan, Lawrence, Compton, Mackenzie. Swinnerton, Hugh Walpole, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair, and others, while the same fulness of consideration is prescribed for Masefield, Shaw, W. IT. Davies, Edward Carpenter, and other outstanding writers. “And when all this has been done there will still remain men so far out of the common ruck as Lord Dunsany, Maurice Hewlett, and Chesterton, each a genius in his way, and 120 others whom despair must lump together. “If we reflect that all these hooks were written for man’s ioy—at least we hope so—or his inspiration, it seems a refinement of cruelty to transform them into an intolerable burden. The system is too thorough. Why, bv the time the too honest student will have cleared a wide swathe in these vast fields of fiction, new growths will have sprung up around him with tropical swiftness, and engulfed him where he stands. Foreign Writers.— “It is not as if he could settle down to critical work at once. The native crop is not altogether . indigenous, and before we begin our intensive culture we must have a wider survey. Ibsen, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Maeterlinck, and the French and Russian writers have flung t-heir seeds into our receptive soil, and a preliminary acquaintance with these is necessary. Acordingly we are given a serviceable bibliography of authors, including such works as Ott-Helter’s Egoists (Stendhal, Frances Huysmans, etc.), and M. S. Jameson’s modern drama in Europe : even then we should still be ignorant of the psychological trend in the modern study of 'art and literature. “Is it worth the trouble. This part undoubtedly is. Here we are gathering the fruit of the labours of those who have made special study of particular provinces, and, while' exercising our judgment, we must largely accept what they tell us, for no man can single-handed survey the earth. But, having won some knowledge thus, are we to dissipate it in studying all these moderns? The flesh shrinks, the brain reels, the soul shudders. Are thev worth while? They cannot possibly be.” PUTTING RELIGION TO WORK. Joining religion to sociability; a Massachusetts church has adopted a community service programme ranging from corrective clinics for crippled children to free music lessons. Three years ago the South Congregational Church at Springfield (Mass.) took over another church which was losing ground because of its proximity to "several stronger churches, and equipped it as a community centre. A novel and- extensive programme was introduced by the Rev. James Gordon Gilkey, pastor of the church, with such success (we read in the Boston Transcript) that last winter’s record shows that more than 40 organisations met- regularly at the Community House, that 679 families were reached by its activities, and that the attendance for the 10 months between September, 1921. and July, 1922, reached the surprising total of 83,431. One of the most interesting lines of work at the Community House is, we are told, the health programme for the children, which is in charge of a graduate nurse, who receives the co-operation of the Springfield Visiting Nurse Association. A free pre-natal clinic is held each week, and every Wednesday afternoon there is a Well-Baby Conference, at which a doctor and two nurses advise mothers about the care, of their small children. During the past 10 months 5678 children have attended this conference. Twice a week corrective clinics for crippled children are held under the direction of Professor S. B. Betzler, of Springfield College, and the attendance at these, clinics (says the writer in the Transcript) rose last winter to 40 children a week. Proper nourishment forms a part of any health programme, ’ and every school day a hot luncheon is served at a nominal cost to the boys and girls of the neighbourhood, many of whom are said to be dependent on the Community House for their daily midday meal. During the school year just closed 7462 children were fed in this way. To complete tins health programme, the South Church has just

equipped the land about the Community House for a children’s playground. Season tickets are sold to the children at the rate of one cent a week, and the attendance averages 300 children a day. The recreational and other programmes, we are told, are equally interesting, and are thus described : “Two motion picture machines have been installed, and during the school year four motion picture entertainments are given each week—the one on Saturday afternoon designed especially for children. “During the winter of 1921-22 30,742 people saw the Community House movies, tne majority of the attendants being children. In co-operation with the Junior Achievement League of the city, the Community House maintains 10 Junior Achievement Clubs,' each meeting weekly and offering boys and girls an opportunity to learn everything from making toys-to building a radio. The Community House also maintains a free Music School at which 10 volunteer music teachers from the South Church give weekly lessons to over 50 children, whose parents are unable to pay for musical instruction. A Christmas Club, organised last Christmas to develop the habit of thrift, reports 105 members, each of whom is saving a definite sum each week. “Tlie total amount saved by these children in the first quarter of 1922 was just over 250d01. In connection with the daily lunches, a children’s library also has been opened. The books have been donated by the church people, and during the past school year over 10,000 children have used this library and the other Community House facilities between school sessions. In April a three-stage radio was added to the Community House equipment, and a club of 20 boys meets regularly through the school year to study and practise on the instrument. Incidentall}' this radio furnishes music for. the Sunday evening services held every week at the Community House. . “Several interesting exneriments are being carried on in religious work. Each Sunday afternoon there is a Community House Sunday School, at which most of the instruction is given by means of motion pictures. This is believed to Ire the first Sunday School of its type in the world. Within two months tne attendance had increased from 65 to over 300. Later each Sunday afternoon a light supper is served to any young people who come to the Community House, and afterwards a Young People's Forum takes the place of the conventional Christian Endeavour. The attendance at the weekly suppers varies from 50 to 100 and the attendance at the Forum from 100 to 200.

“In connection with these religious gatherings for young people an elaborate series of socials is arranged, including theatricals at the South Church Parish House and dances at the Community House. Every Sunday night the Community House has its own religious service, with motion pictures as a definite part of the programme. lii the last three years the attendance has increased steadily, till this spring people were turned away week after week. “The pictures shown range from Biblical subjects to ohoto-dramas like ‘The Servant in the House’ and patriotic films like ‘The Alan Without a Country.’ “This Community House urogram me has developed in such a promising way that the South Church has just made a motion picture film illustrating these different activities and showing the actual work that is being done in them. This film is entitled ‘A Modern Church in Action,’ runs for 25 minutes, and is available for use by other churches and community houses. It is believed to be the first film ever made by a church to show the scope of its community work.” SUPERSTITION IN MY SEX. By Ladt Bland-Sutton, wife of the famous surgeon. To-day is the day of the superstitious woma/i, And so will to-morrow be. I admit frankly that I am superstitious. I admit it in tlie face of Burke, who informs me that “superstition is the religion of feeble minds.” And I take refuge behind Goethe, who said that superstition is “the poetry of life.’’ Leave ns our superstition—provided that we retain our sense of humour! No woman in- her senses really believes that a horseshoe over the garage 'will bring her £SOOO a year, or that a sprig of May in the drawing-room leads to a pain j n the lower regions. But we do experience a delicious thrill if we walk under a ladder, and a pleased sensation when we find four-leaved clover (as I did yesterday) in a country field.

The danger—and it is a real one to-day —is when women actually do put their trust in gods made with tlie hand of men. There exists a small set who believe that heaven lies in a- crystal of common glass, and that a black” cat can do a great dea-l more for them than merely to act as a decorative member of the household. These women are not confined to any one region of Society. The shop windows, not only of Bond street, but of the slums, bear witness to this truth. And what a motley collection it is ! Alase-ot in the Bath.—There is the tiny coral hand, with Its outstretched finger, solemnly carried by apparently blameless women to avert the “evil eye.” There is the little pig of black bog-wood, slipped furtively into the vanity bag, where it forms a somewhat incongruous neighbour to the powderpuix. There is the tiny motto, printed on parchment or on coloured satin, telling its fair owner that all will be well provided she ne sr parts with it. And then there is the charm from New Zealand —the tiki —a liidc-ous little god carved from dull green stone —one of which I wear as 1 write. The most popular of all modern devices seems to be the figures of Touch-Wood, with black, woolly hair and scarlet blobs for eyes and mouth. The more hideous thev are the better, and some women will never be parted from them. They take them to dances. They wear them during sleep. 1 heard of one

woman who refused, even in her bath, to remove it. That is superstition carried to extremes. I remember well the sudden agonised expression of a woman who was lunching with me, who exclaimed : “My fan ! i have lost my fan !” was a bitterly cold day, and I suggested that perhaps she might dispense with it till after lunch. “But you don’t understand !” she cried. “It had the dice inside! It was my t-o Ken. . . .’’ Lunch was quite spoiled. I afterwards discovered that these fans, which are quaintly loaded with dice, are largely imported from Japan for the diversion of our more susceptible sisters. Lucky Fridays.— Fridays and the thirteenth are more unpopular tins year than they have ever been before. But for me, foolish though you trav think me, these days have always proved lucky. I was bom on a Friday, I met my husband on a Friday, we were engaged on a Friday, and married on a Friday. It is a pleasant coincidence, and to call it a superstition is -merely to add a little spice to the monotony of life. Women are more superstitious than men, largely because superstition is a becoming pose. it is a feminine attribute. The little shudder as a dog howls in the country, the graceful gesture as the salt is flicked over a bare shoulder, the downcast eyes when the new moon is shining through glass, the cleverly simulated horror which greets the shattering of a mirror—all there are tricks of the trade. In their heart of hearts they know they are playing a game. The little golliwog round their wrist is no more than a golliwog. But he is a charming fellow, and, in any case, it is something to talk about during a dull season. But these women should beware lest, by their example, they play upon the more pliable minds of some of their highly strung friends. Superstition is a pretty toy, but has been the means of warping many souls. The road of the world’s history is littered with these broken symbols. Near at hand they are harmless enough, brass billikins and swastikas of gopl and silver. Millions of horseshoes strew the route, and a thousand charms, grotesque, sombre, exquisite. But in the dim borderland of history, glimmering darkly through the centuries, we see the green, eternal eyes of a black cat, and hideous, repellent rites to which not women only, but men, have bowed the head. By all means let us play with these pretty shcrfl-ows. But let us see that they remain shadows and never come to life. —Weekly Despatch.