Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/729

Rh thousand flowers are wafted from the neighboring gardens, and the buzz and hum of insect life show that other living things are attracted by the efforts of the flowers. Yonder is a white convolvulus, its flowers showing up against the dark foliage like little moons. It does not emit any perfume, for its size and color alone make it conspicuous. Here is an avenue of fiddlewood trees, the flowers of which can not be seen, but the almost overpowering odor they emit is quite as effectual as the color of the convolvulus.

You would like to classify these odors. Some are very grateful, others cloying. There is the jasmin type, which, when excessively strong, is sickly. Then comes the West Indian mignonette, which is not unpleasant at a distance, but which is almost nasty in a room. The most grateful to our sense of smell appears to be an odor in which there is something spicy—this never cloys. On a damp evening all these come at intervals, now as light zephyrs and anon in overpowering bursts of perfume. Then there are odors too delicate for appreciation by our gross organs, which nevertheless attract insects from long distances. As the flowers open, the visitors appear, to linger round for an hour or two perhaps in the morning and then vanish until the same time next day.

Why do particular species of butterflies and moths confine themselves to one plant? Our plague, the butterfly above mentioned, comes to lay its eggs on or near the Aristolochia, but on no other plant. A day or two ago we found its larvae on some seedlings about two inches high, and there is one plant which vainly attempts to push out new shoots, for as soon as a green leaf appears it is eaten. But the insect does not always lay its eggs on the leaves or stalks of the plant, but rather chooses a railing of the gallery or a portion of the latticework, always, however, in the immediate neighborhood of the food plant. Is not this the act of a reasoning being rather than hereditary instinct?

The effect of the rainfall on our magnificent vegetation is wonderful. What immense quantities of water are stored in the great herbaceous plants of the tropics—the banana, maranta, and the treelike papaw! All these are softer-wooded than many of the delicate plants of other climes which grow only to a few inches above the ground. With such a wealth of light and moisture, ever} thing rises toward the sun. Daisies and primroses would be smothered; there is no room for them except up in the trees among the epiphytes. Your gardens, fields, and even woods are but miniature representatives of ours—only comparable to the contents of a box of Dutch toys. Grasses often rise above our heads, and the cousins of your Compositæ, become tall shrubs. There are no Banunculaceæ, Primulaceæ, or Umbelliferæ, and the