[AF] Darwin’s Phytologia.
In defence of his insect protegées, Dr. Evans has observed:
“First, That the proportion of wax collected from the anthers is probably very trifling, it being so readily and abundantly obtainable from honey.
“Secondly, That for any depredations committed on the farina, they amply compensate, by their inadvertent yet providential conveyance of it, on their limbs and corslets, to the female organs of monoecious or dioecious plants; whose impregnation must otherwise have depended on the uncertain winds. This is exemplified in the practice of our gardeners, who in early spring, before they dare expose their hotbeds to the open air, and consequently to the access of insects, insure the fertility of the cucumbers and melons, by shaking a male blossom over each female flower. For the same purpose, and with the same success, a gentleman in Shropshire substitutes a male blossom, in place of the female one, at the top of his embryo cucumber, which instantly adheres, and falls off in due time. To the same kind intrusion of insects we owe the numberless new sorts of esculents and endless varieties of flowers in the parterre:
‘Where Beauty plays
Her idle freaks; from family diffus’d
To family, as flies the father dust
The varied colours run.’
Thomson.
“Thirdly, That in a great many instances, the honey-cups are completely beyond the reach of the fructifying organs, and cannot possibly be subservient to their use. Hence Sir J. E. Smith believes the honey to be intended, by its scent, to allure these venial panders to the flowers, and thereby shows how highly he estimates their value to vegetation. See his Introduction to Botany. In the same work, the author observes that Sprengel has ingeniously demonstrated, in some hundreds of instances, how the corolla serves as an attraction to insects, indicating by various marks, sometimes perhaps by its scent, where they may find honey, and accommodating them with a convenient resting-place or shelter while they extract it. This elegant and ingenious theory receives confirmation from almost every flower we examine. Proud man is disposed to think that
‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,’
because he has not deigned to explore it; but we find that even the beauties of the most sequestered wilderness are not made in vain. They have myriads of admirers, attracted by their charms, and rewarded by their treasures, which would be as useless as the gold of a miser, to the plant itself, were they not the means of bringing insects about it.”
Thus the bee, by settling upon and collecting honey from a thousand different flowers, is thereby assisting the great purpose of vegetable reproduction, at the same time that the loads she carries home enable her to construct receptacles for the reproduction of her own race.