HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



27 



upon by selection — they disappear." With regard to 

 this statement, we should remember one or two things ; 

 in the first place, the " bees " were not bees at all, the 

 co-adaptations which now exist between them and the 

 flowers they visit,and without which the colour in itself 

 would be meaningless, were for the most part not yet 

 evolved. It should be remembered that while these 

 variations of colour were first appearing, the co- 

 adaptations which we see in such beautiful perfection 

 at the present day, were appearing as variations. In 

 Hermann Miiller's words: "The first traces of 

 adaptation to insects, could only be due to the 

 influence of quite short-lipped insects with feebly 

 developed colour-sense. The most primitive flowers 

 are therefore for the most part (except, for instance, 

 Salix) simple, widely open, regular, devoid of honey 

 or with their honey unconcealed and easily accessible, 

 and white or yellow in colour {e.g. most UmbellifercB 

 and AhinecE, many Rammailacei2 and Rosacea). . . . 

 Gradually from the miscellaneous lot of flower-visiting 

 insects, all much alike in their tastes, there arose 

 others more skilful and intelligent, with longer tongues 

 and acuter colour-sense ; and they gradually caused 

 the production of flowers with more varied colours, 

 honey invisible to or beyond the reach of the less 

 intelligent short-tongued guests, and various con- 

 trivances for lodging, protecting, and pointing out the 

 honey." We can thus see how the new colours would 

 become correlated with increasing complexity of 

 structure, and would at last come to be recognised by 

 the developing bee as the outward marks of flowers 

 suited to it in structure ; the eventual taste for blue 

 arising from the selection of the varieties visited be- 

 cause of their gradually increasing'specialisation, and 

 the neglect of the more primitive yellow or wliite 

 forms. 



Mr. Grant Allen goes so far as to say, that the 

 appearance of the colours followed a regular law of 

 progressive colouration — yellow, white, red, blue. — 

 which would thus be correlated with increasing com- 

 plexity ; in his own words : " Bees and butterflies 

 are the most highly-adapted of all insects to honey- 

 seeking and flower-feeding. They have themselves on 

 their side undergone the largest amount of specialisa- 

 tion for that particular function. And if the more 

 specialised and modified flowers, which gradually 

 fitted their forms and the position of their honey- 

 glands to the forms of the bees or butterflies, showed 

 a natural tendency to pass from yellow through pink 

 and red to purple and blue, it would follow that the 

 insects which were being evolved side by side with 

 them, and which were aiding at the same time in their 

 evolution, would grow to recognise these developed 

 colours as the visible symbols of those flowers from 

 which they could obtain the largest amount of honey 

 with the least possible trouble. Thus it would finally 

 result that the ordinary unspecialised flowers, which 

 depended upon small insect riff-raff, would be mostly 

 left yellow or white ; those which appealed to rather 



higher insects would become pink or red ; and those 

 which laid themselves out for bees and butterflies, the 

 aristocrats of the arthropodous world, would grow for 

 the most part to be purple or blue" ("Colours of 

 Flowers," pp. 23, 24). If then the theory is to stand 

 at all, it must rest upon the supposition that bees 

 grew to recognise " blue or red as an index of high 

 specialisation," for we cannot assume the then not 

 fully-evolved bee to have acquired his taste for blue 

 (this of course^ must be distinguished from the power 

 of discriminating the colour blue from other colours) 

 from any other source. And even if we do not abso- 

 lutely accept Mr. Grant Allen's ' ' Law of Progressive 

 Colouration," there is good reason for believing with 

 Hermann Miiller that red and blue appeared later 

 than white and yellow, and would therefore be corre- 

 lated with the more complex structures. 



Thus the statement under which, according to 

 Mr. Bulman, " the whole theory collapses " is abso- 

 lutely necessary for its support. 



I think, from what I have said above, it will 

 hardly be necessary now to refute Mr. Bulman'sidea, 

 that Mr. Grant Allen believes bees to be attracted by 

 blue "simply as a colour"; his quotations merely 

 amount to the statement, that every time Mr. Grant 

 Allen speaks of the " azure-loving bee," he does not 

 explain the origin of its love for azure, which could 

 hardly be expected of him. The following passages 

 from the " Colours of Flowers " are, however, ex- 

 plicit enough: "The fact is, blue flowers are, as a 

 rule, specialised for fertilisation by bees, a/id dees 

 therefore prefer this colour'''' (p. 19). "Bees show a 

 marked taste for blue, because blue is the colour of the 

 juost advanced fl.oivers'" (p. 119). 



{To be contimied.) 



OUR SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 



"\ T TANT of space prevents us from giving more 



V V than a general list of the chief articles in 



the "Transactions," &c., of the following societies. 



County of Middlesex Natural History and Science 



Society: "The Chemistry of London Clay," by 

 W. Mattieu Williams; "Appearance in London 

 oi Ephestia Kiihniella, and the Remedy provided by 

 Nature," by Sidney J. Klein ; " Horns and Antlers," 

 by Professor Flower; "Fossils of the Flint, or the 

 Wonders Lying at Our Own Doors," by George 

 Barraclough ; " On Some Methods of Collecting 

 and Keeping Pond-life for the Microscope," by C. 



Rousselet. The City of London College Society: 



"The Use of Experiment in Biology," by Professor 

 G. S. Boulger ; " The New Darwinism, or the 



Segregation of the Fit," by J. W. Gregory. 



Hackney Microscopical and Natural History Socuty: 

 " The Migration of Internal Parasites," by W. 



Smart. Bristol Naturalists' Society: " Dolomitic 



C 2 



