Abstract
THE following incident may throw some further light on the subject brought forward by your correspondent, Mr. J. Parkin, in his letter in your issue of November 4, òn “A Bee's Movements in a Room.” In the year 1893, the humming-bird hawk moth was particularly common here. On one or two occasions, driving out in a little trap, with a Shetland pony, whose head-gear was ornamented with pyramidal blue rosettes, one of these beautiful insects would fly straight at one of the rosettes, and hover over it for a few seconds, though the pony was going at a trot. It would seem that in this case the colour alone was the chief attraction; the odour being insignificant. But there are, I believe, numerous other instances of insects being attracted in the first instance by colour. I may add that these insects visited chiefly the scarlet geraniums in my garden.
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THORNLEY, A. Insects and Colour. Nature 57, 30 (1897). https://doi.org/10.1038/057030d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/057030d0
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