144 THE GARDEN OF EARTH 



strangely — like many other things in insect-life and even 

 in plant-life — as if both insects and plants knew in a 

 manner, dimly, what they are about. 



In any case, one fact becomes clear with daylight 

 clearness, that all the vast work of Cross-Fertilisation is 

 part of a great plan — a Divine plan — not, as once was 

 imagined, putting needless hindrances in the way of 

 success, but working steadily and systematically towards 

 beautiful ends and ever fuller developments. The 

 reading of it recalls to mind certain words spoken in 

 earliest days of our world's history — " And God saw that 

 it was good ! " 



That each helps the other is a truth undeniable. 

 A plant cannot stir; but it can manufacture food. A 

 bee can flit to and fro with ease, but it cannot manufac- 

 ture the sweet stuff which forms the foundation for 

 real honey. The raw material is in the flower; and 

 the hive-bee has in its own little body a small apparatus 

 which can transform that raw material into food for itself 

 and for human kind. 



So the plant does all it can to attract the bee — and 

 other insects. And the bee does its utmost to satisfy its 

 own needs, while performing friendly offices for the plant. 



Most of us must often have watched a big humble-bee 

 bustling from flower to flower; diving in and out of 

 blossom after blossom; blundering into this one and 

 that one in her eager search ; till one is almost forced to 

 the belief that bees are not quite so clever as one had 

 imagined. She keeps forgetting which flower she has 

 tried before, and she rushes again and again into the same, 

 coming out with what sounds like a " buzz " of indigna- 



