INSECTS IN RELATION TO PLANTS. 54 ( ,> 



that very many insects quite unconsciously promote the growth and 

 advance of them. 



If we inspect the organisation of those parts of plants upon which its 

 further existence as a species depends, namely, the sexual organs, we 

 shall speedily observe that their position is such, that, without extra- 

 neous means, the male seed could not reach the female organ. Thus, 

 therefore, in all plants which, without such assistance, could not be 

 impregnated, the procreation of new individuals by the planting of a 

 ripe seed is rendered almost impossible, and would also in fact but 

 seldom occur, were it not for the intervention of insects. A great 

 number of insects, therefore, namely, all the Lepidoptera, the bees, 

 wasps, ichneumons, the majority of Diptera, and many beetles find their 

 food either in the pollen itself of the plants or in the honey juices 

 secreted by the nectaries, and for this purpose they visit flowers to 

 procure their food from them. In these visits made without care for 

 disturbing the parts of flowers, or mixing them together, they convey 

 the farina which has burst from the anthers to the stigma of the female 

 pistil, and thereby cause impregnation. This relation, for the observa- 

 tion of which we are indebted to the venerable Ch. K. Sprengel *, 

 perfectly explains to us the relative connexion existing between plants 

 and insects. To obtain at some period this object, the plant, by great 

 self-sacrifice, and, indeed, with sometimes the loss of its own life, has 

 nurtured the insect within its bosom, and fed it with its own juices, 

 and, what it is not enabled to attain individually, being destroyed by 

 its enemy which it reared as a friend, it conveys over to its congeners. 

 We may possibly be misunderstood in thus speaking of the reciprocal 

 relation existing between plants and insects, as insinuating a species of 

 consciousness of their calling and a recognition of their duties ; for it is 

 not the plant or insect that thinks or reflects, but Eternal Wisdom has 

 felt and thought for them, and has so strengthened their mutual attach- 

 ment, that the human mind in explaining it may well illustrate it as 

 affection and friendship, and as a recognition of what the one is indebted 

 to the other, and what it may thence expect in return, thereby 

 exhibiting the infinite love distributed throughout the universe t. 

 But we are diverging from the path of facts, to which we shall 



* Das Entdeckte Geheiuinisz im Baue und der Bcfruchtung der Blumen. Berlin, 

 1793. 4to. 



f See Burdach's Physiologic, torn. i. p. 322 and p. 3. 1.9, fcc. 



