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136
My Studio Neighbors
·
W. Hamilton Gibson
64
Botany
and
entomology
must
henceforth
go
hand-in-hand.
The
flower
must
be
considered
as
an
embodied
welcome
to
an
insect
affinity,
and
all
sorts
of
courtesies
prevail
among
them
in
the
reception
of
their
invited
guests.
The
banquet
awaits,
but
various
singular
ceremonies
are
enjoined
between
the
cup
and
the
lip,
the
stamens
doing
the
hospitalities
in
time-honored
forms
of
etiquette.
Flora
exacts
no
arbitrary
customs.
Each
flower
is
a
law
unto
itself.
And
how
expressive,
novel,
and
eccentric
are
these
social
customs!
The
garden
salvia,
for
instance,
slaps
the
burly
bumblebee
upon
the
back
and
marks
him
for
her
own
as
he
is
ushered
in
to
the
feast.
The
mountain-laurel
welcomes
the
twilight
moth
with
an
impulsive
multiple
embrace.
The
desmodium
and
genesta
celebrate
their
hospitality
with
a
joke,
as
it
were,
letting
their
threshold
fall
beneath
the
feet
of
the
caller,
and
startling
him
with
an
explosion
and
a
cloud
of
yellow
powder,
suggesting
the
day
pyrotechnics
of
the
Chinese.
The
prickly-pear
cactus
encloses
its
buzzing
visitor
in
a
golden
bower,
from
which
he
must
emerge
at
the
roof
as
dusty
as
a
miller.
The
barberry,
in
similar
vein,
lays
mischievous
hold
of
the
tongue
of
its
sipping
bee,
and
I
fancy,
in
his
early
acquaintance,
before
he
has
learned
its
ways,
gives
him
more
of
a
welcome
than
he
had
bargained
for.
The
evening
primrose,
with
outstretched
filaments,
hangs
a
golden
necklace
about
the
welcome
murmuring
noctuid,
while
the
various
orchids
excel
in
the
ingenuity
of
their
salutations.
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