BEES IN THEIR CLERICAL CHARACTER.
"But connected with this, another important purpose of nature is fulfilled, which must not here pass without special notice. The principle, so fruitful in important social consequences among animals, that the offspring owes its parentage jointly to two individuals of different sexes, or, in other words, must always have a father and a mother, equally prevails in the vegetable kingdom. There also are the gentlemen and ladies, there also are the loves which unite them, loves which, as well as those of superior orders of beings, have supplied a theme for poets. Now, among the many other interesting offices with which the Author of nature has invested the little creatures which form the subject of this notice, not the least singular is that of being the priests who celebrate the nuptials of the flowers. It is the bee literally which joins the hands and consecrates the union of the fair virgin lily and the blushing maiden rose with their respective bridegrooms. The grains of pollen which we have been describing are these bride and bridegrooms, and are transported on the bee from the male to the female flower; the happy individuals thus united in the bands of wedlock being the particular grains which the bee lets fall from its body on the flower of the opposite sex, as it passes through its blossom.
"And here we find another circumstance to excite our admiration of the wise laws of that Providence, which cares for the well-being of a little flower as much as for that of a great lord of the creation. If the bee wandered indifferently from flower to flower without selection, the gentlemen of one species would be mated with the ladies of another, hybrid breeds would ensue, and the confusion of species would be the consequence. But the bee, as knowing this, flies from rose to rose, or from lily to lily, but never from the lily to the rose, or from the rose to the lily."—Lardner.