§ VII. FACULTIES AND FUNCTIONS.
It would be trenching too much upon our limits if we were to venture into the inviting field to which this heading might introduce us. Still the extreme interest of the subject renders it perhaps desirable that some succinct allusion should be made to it, even if it be for little more than to remark that the information we have to give is scattered through other sections and chapters. Especially as some might be disposed to skip the unattractive portion on "Anatomy and Physiology," it may be well to state here that in the second section of that chapter will be found a brief account of the sight and other senses of bees, and of the uses of their antennæ, by which they seem to feel, hear, smell, and communicate. A remark upon their power of distinguishing colours, and its practical value, will be found in connection with our description of bee-houses for twelve hives ([Chap. IV. § i.]). On the senses of taste and smell we have some further observations in the sections of [Chapter VI]. upon "Stings," "Robbing," and "Bee-keeping in London."
For the functions and habits of bees we must also refer to the passages already instanced, as well as to the sections above on the "The Queen," etc., that on "The Rationale of Swarming" ([page 72]), and to those in Chapter VI. on the four substances which bees collect or secrete, as well as (though in a less degree) to those headed "Pasturage" and "General Remarks." Those who will favour our book with a consecutive reading will, we trust, find at the conclusion that all the more important and interesting facts of this class are in one or other of these places tolerably though briefly described.
The service that bees perform to flowers is a subject that has attracted much attention of late years. As every one knows, or should know, a flower has its stamens and pistils, which are respectively its male and female organs, and the pollen contained in the anthers, or little knobs on the summits of the stamens, must be conveyed to the pistils, or no seed will be produced. When the anthers burst; the pollen might happen to fall partly on the pistils, or it might not; but the visits of bees (though they do not roll about in the flower, in the manner that some have stated) are found by experience to be efficacious in conveying this dust to the right spot. Owners of fruit trees have noticed, in a season generally unfavourable to the orchard, that if during only one fine forenoon the bees had spread freely amongst the blossoms of a particular tree, that tree would prove more fruitful than its fellows. On this account the orchard is a good place for the apiary, for it seems that the more abundant the honey the better will be the crop of fruit. The whole subject is scientifically treated in Mr. Darwin's remarkable book, "The Fertilisation of Orchids," but we must add to the foregoing how much more urgent are the services of bees in the case of what are termed monœcious and diœcious plants, the former of which have the stamens and pistils in different flowers, and the latter have these flowers upon different roots. A familiar example of the former is found in the nut tree, whose long catkins, hanging like caterpillars in the early spring, are assemblages of male flowers; while the females, from which the nuts develop, may be detected by their crimson pistil-tips (stigmas), and grow in stalkless clusters of two or three in the openings of remote scaly buds. But for the visits or bees, our autumn nutting rambles would thus have but little prospect of success. In the second case, often very considerable distances intervene between the two flowers; for instance, with the common dog mercury (Mercurialis perennis), a botanist may find plantation after plantation containing male flowers by thousands, but not a single female; and at length in some far-off spot he may succeed in finding the females, equally by themselves, yet in full seed. In these cases there is nothing but the visits of pollen-gathering insects which can convey the fertilising dust to the flower for which it is designed. And according to Mr. Darwin all plants are practically diœcious, for he states that the pollen, to have a fertilising effect, must be brought to the pistils of one flower from the stamens of one on another root. Whether this be considered established or not, there remains the fact of the existence of diœcious plants as explaining the admirable design of the provision that a bee in the course of one flight shall gather pollen solely from one species. As far as honey-gathering is concerned the bee is not governed by this rule; but for this other important function it becomes absolutely essential that the right pollen, and that only, should be conveyed to the right flower. The careful observer may note how the dust on the bodies of bees varies from yellow to red and brown according to the kind of flowers from which it has been gathered, and the "socks," as the Germans call them, on the two hind legs will be found always of the same colour.
To no scientific man are we probably more indebted for observations and deductions upon this branch than to Sir John Lubbock. Whilst this edition was in course of preparation it was the writer's privilege to listen to a lecture upon "Relations of Plants and Insects" delivered by this able investigator before the Society of Arts; and the lecture has since been published as a paper in the Fortnightly Review of April 1877. In the course of his remarks Sir John cited many interesting particulars of the ways in which flowers are protected from the incursions of ants, whose visits would be harmful, both from their rifling the stores from the bees, by whom alone they are likely to be fertilised, and from the liability of the latter to desert any species in which their tender probosces were in danger of being seized by ants—it being the nature of an ant to grapple any pointed thing directed towards her. Kerner was referred to as having observed some of the modes by which such results are obviated. In some cases there are chevaux de frise around the flower, in the form of hairs pointing downwards, or other barriers which the ant cannot penetrate or surmount: notably in the corn bluebottle, which is smooth all over except just beneath the flower, and in the thicket heads of some thistles. In others there are glutinous parts which the ant cannot traverse, as was noticed in the Polygonum amphibium, which, when it grows on land, has sticky glands at the extremities of certain hairs, while when in the water, where it is safe already, it is perfectly smooth. Again, there are pendulous flowers, like the snowdrop, which are so slippery on the surface that an ant would immediately slide off, as was humorously illustrated by a sketch prepared with several others by the lecturer's daughter. Facts were also stated showing how the pollen is sometimes preserved by the closing of certain flowers at times when winged insects were not on the move, and the exclusion thereby of such as would not aid in the work of fructification. "It is not too much to say," as Sir John elsewhere expresses himself ("British Wild Flowers in Relation to Insects "), "that if on the one hand flowers are in many cases necessary to insects, insects on the other hand are still more necessary to the very existence of flowers; that if insects have been in many cases modified and adapted with a view to obtain honey and pollen from flowers, flowers in their turn owe their scent and colour, their honey, and even their distinctive forms, to the action of insects."
"And plains sad Chloris how these spoilers steal
From her ripe crests the vivifying meal,
Pare the thin films that shield her anthered reign,
And all her nectared cells insatiate drain?
No! kind intruders; all reserved for you
She pours through honeyed horn her luscious dew,
While, grateful for the rich repast, ye shed
Fresh showers prolific round her genial bed."
Evans.