[R] Burdach, bk. ii., c. 3.
What the wind accomplishes hap-hazard, flinging abroad in capricious showers the generative elements, the insect performs through love,—the direct love of its species, the indirect and confused love of the amiable auxiliary which welcomes and nourishes it, which will hereafter nourish also its eggs and continue its maternal work. Its action, therefore, is not external and superficial, like that of the wind; it is internal and penetrating. The ardent, curious insect will not suffer itself to be checked by the light and trivial obstacles with which vegetable modesty surrounds the threshold of its mysteries; it boldly dashes aside the veil, and enters into the inmost economy of the flower. It seizes, it pillages, and it carries away, assured that all it does will be approved. The flower, in its powerless expansion, rejoices only too keenly in the deeds of these thievish liberators, who will transport its desire whither it would fain transport itself. "Take," she says, "and take yet more!" The insect then exhausts its utmost effort; each of its hairs becomes a tiny magnetic dart, which attracts and wishes to attract. Would that it might be enveloped in these points, and over all its surface (like the lightning conductor) concentrate this treasure of vegetable electricity! Such is its aspiration. An aspiration realized in the higher insect, in the bee, which bristles everywhere with a magnetic apparatus,—the bee, predestined by the tools peculiar to it, both to its little individual industry of honey-making, and to the grand, general, universal industry of the fecundation, of plants.
It is an admirable creature, and what the great physiologist has just said of the loves of the flower and the insect applies particularly to it; except with this notable distinction on the part of the bee, that it robs the flower only of that noble luxuriance of life which it lavishes upon love. The bee does not establish its cradle in the plant that the young may thence derive its sole sustenance, and gradually devour its nurse. Instead of depositing its egg, and exposing it to the hazards of the vegetable existence, as the butterfly does with its future caterpillar, the bee economizes the plant, and, without attacking it, borrows from it the precious materials which its art works up into palaces of alabaster, amber, or of gold, where its children will in due time repose.
The innocency of the bee is one of its lofty attributes, no less than its miraculous art. Its sting is simply a defensive and indispensable weapon, not against man-with whom, of its own accord, it does not wage war—but against the cruel wasps, its terrible enemies. The bee, on the other hand, injures none. It does not live by death; its inoffensive life does not demand the sacrifice of other lives. It stimulates innumerable existences; it vivifies and fecundates them. There is no uncultivated desert, no wild, bare region which it does not animate,—where it does not infuse fresh vigour into the languishing vegetation, urging the plants to bud, watching over and inspecting them. It reproaches them with their slothfulness; and as soon as they open to the influence of love-these poor dumb virgins!—it establishes between them the requisite interpreters, carries off in its murmurs their pollen and perfume, and harmonizes the aromas which are their blossoms of thought.
This process begins in the month of March. When an uncertain but already potent sun reawakes the sleeping sap, the tiny flowers of the fields, the wild violet, the Easter-daisy of the sward, the buttercup of the hedgerow, the precocious gillyflower, expanding, perfume the air. But their expansion lasts only for a moment. Barely open at noon, by three o'clock they fold themselves up again, and veil their shivering stamens. In this brief interval of gentle heat you may see a little wan-looking creature, completely clad but very chilly, which also ventures to unfurl its wings. The bee quits its city, in the knowledge that the manna is ready for it and its little ones.
A little matter then, it is true, but most cradles are empty at this epoch. The great fecundity of the mother bee still lurks concealed in her bosom. The regular and rapid incubation, which might suffice to create a world, will not commence until a much later period,—the sunny time of May.
How admirable is this agreement! Most of the shivering flowers, like the shivering bee, wait a more equable season before they bare to the sun their corolla, too delicate to endure the caprices of April.
It is pleasant to watch the intercourse between these charming creatures. The docile flower inclines and yields to the insect's unquiet movements. The shrine which it had closed against the winds, and the inquisitive glance, it opens to the beloved bee, which, impregnated by it, speeds afar on her message of love. The delicious precautions which Nature has taken to veil from profane eyes the mysteries enacted therein, do not delay for a moment the audacious seeker, who is completely at home, so to speak, and has no fear of being considered an intruder. One flower, for example, is protected by a couple of petals which join together in the form of an arch (as, for instance, the iris on the border of the waters, which in this manner defends from the rain its delicate little lovers). Another, like the sweet-pea, dons a kind of helmet, whose vizor must be lifted by its suitor.