from rain and pilferers whose bodies are not perfectly adapted to
further the flower's cross-fertilization. The common bumblebee
(Bombus terrestris) plays a mean trick, all too frequently, when
he bites a hole at the base of the blossom, not only gaining easy
access to the sweets for himself, but opening the way for others
less intelligent than he, but quite ready to profit by his
mischief, and so defeat nature's plan. Dr. Ogle observed that the
same bee always acts in the same manner, one sucking the nectar
legitimately, another always biting a hole to obtain it
surreptitiously, the natural inference, of course, being that
some bees, like small boys, are naturally depraved.

In cultivated fields and waste places farther south and westward
to the Pacific Coast roams the COMMON or PEBBLE VETCH OR TARE (V.
saliva), another domesticated weed that has come to us from
Europe, where it is extensively grown for fodder. Let no reproach
fall on these innocent plants that bear an opprobrious name: the
tare of Scripture is altogether different, the bearded darnel of
Mediterranean regions, whose leaves deceive one by simulating
those of wheat, and whose smaller seeds, instead of nourishing
man, poison him. Only one or two light blue-purple flowers grow
in the axils of the leaves of our common vetch. The leaf,
compounded of from eight to fourteen leaflets, indented at the
top, has a long terminal tendril, whose little sharp tip assists
the awkward vine, like a grappling hook.

The AMERICAN VETCH or TARE or PEA VINE (V. Americana) boasts
slightly larger bluish-purple flowers than the blue vetch, but
fewer of them; from three to nine only forming its loose raceme.
In moist soil throughout a very broad northerly and westerly