Sir John Lubbock has shown that bees are not only attracted by bright colours, but that they even know one colour from another.  He put some honey on slips of glass with coloured papers under them, and when he had accustomed the bees to find the honey always on the blue glass, he washed this glass clean, and put the honey on the red glass instead.  Now if the bees had followed only the smell of the honey, they would have flown to the red glass, but they did not.  They went first to the blue glass, expecting to find the honey on the usual colour, and it was only when they were disappointed that they went off to the red.

Is it not beautiful to think that the bright pleasant colours we love so much in flowers, are not only ornamental, but that they are useful and doing their part in keeping up healthy life in our world?

Neither must we forget what sweet scents can do.  Have you never noticed the delicious smell which comes from beds of mignonette, thyme, rosemary, mint, or sweet alyssum, from the small hidden bunches of laurustinus blossom, or from the tiny flowers of the privet?  These plants have found another way of attracting the insects; they have no need of bright colours, for their scent is quite as true and certain a guide.  You will be surprised if you once begin to count them up, how many white and dull or dark-looking flowers are sweet-scented, while gaudy flowers, such as tulip, foxglove and hollyhock, have little or no scent.  And then, just as in the world we find some people who have everything to attract others to them, beauty and gentleness, cleverness, kindliness, and loving sympathy, so we find some flowers, like the beautiful lily, the lovely rose, and the delicate hyacinth, which have colour and scent and graceful shapes all combined.

But we are not yet nearly at an end of the contrivances of flowers to secure the visits of insects.  Have you not observed that different flowers open and close at different times?  The daisy receives its name day’s eye, because it opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, while the evening primrose (Aenothera biennis) and the night campion (Silene noctiflora) spread out their flowers just as the daisy is going to bed.

What do you think is the reason of this?  If you go near a bed of evening primroses just when the sun is setting, you will soon be able to guess, for they will then give out such a sweet scent that you will not doubt for a moment that they are calling the evening moths to come and visit them.  The daisy opens by day, because it is visited by day insects, but those particular moths which can carry the pollen-dust of the evening primrose, fly only by night, and if this flower opened by day other insects might steal its honey, while they would not be the right size or shape to touch its pollen-bags and carry the dust.

It is the same if you pass by a honeysuckle in the evening; you will be surprised how much stronger its scent is than in the day-time.  This is because the sphinx hawk-moth is the favourite visitor of that flower, and comes at nightfall, guided by the strong scent, to suck out the honey with its long proboscis, and carry the pollen-dust.