ttract the ants, and keep them
about the most tender and vulnerable parts of the plant, to prevent them
being injured; and I further believe that one of the principal enemies
that they serve to guard against in tropical America is the leaf-cutting
ant, as I have noticed that the latter are very much afraid of the small
black ants.

On the third year after I had noticed the attendance of the ants on my
passion flower, I found that the glands were not so well looked after as
before, and soon discovered that a number of scale insects had
established themselves on the stems, and that the ants had in a great
measure transferred their attentions to them. An ant would stand over a
scale insect and stroke it alternately on each side with its antennas,
whereupon every now and then a clear drop of honey would exude from a
pore on the back of the scale insect and be imbibed by the ant. Here it
was clear that the scale insect was competing successfully with the
leaves and sepals for the attendance and protection of the ants, and was
successful either through the fluid it furnished being more attractive
or more abundant. I have, from these facts, been led to the conclusion
that the use of honey-secreting glands in plants is to attract insects
that will protect the flower buds and leaves from being injured by
herbivorous insects and mammals; but I do not mean to infer that this is
the use of all glands, for many of the small appendicular bodies, called
"glands" by botanists, do not secrete honey. The common dog-rose of
England is furnished with glands on the stipules, and in other species
they are more numerous, until in the wild rose of the northern counties
the leaves are thickly edged, and the fruit and sepals covered with
stalked glands. I have only observed the wild roses in the north of
England, but there I have never seen insects attending the glands. These
glands, however, do not secrete honey; but a dark, resinous, sticky
liquid, that probably is useful by being distasteful to both insects and
mammals.

FOOTNOTES:

[306-1] From _The Naturalist in Nicaragua_.

[Illustration]

THE FAMILY OF MICHAEL AROUT[314-1]

_From the French of_ EMILE SOUVESTRE

_September 15th, Eight O'clock._--This morning, while I was arranging my
books, Mother Genevieve came in and brought me the basket of fruit I buy
of her every Sunday. For nearly twenty years that I have lived in this
quarter I have dealt in her little fruit sho