AMERICAN HONEY PLANTS 171 



Darwin saw in it the gradual modification of earlier structures because 

 the new were helpful in the struggle of life and their possessors for this 

 reason were likely to survive and pass them on to their offspring. 



There is a German country saying that the honeybee was forbidden 

 the red clover because she didn't keep Sunday. Beekeepers know that her 

 tongue is a little too short for the honey tube of the red clover flower 

 and that she doesn't waste time in trying to get what is out of her reach. 

 They know, too; that some races of honeybees really can suck the red 

 clover nectar because they have longer tongues, and if beekeepers ever 

 want to do it they can probably set an expert plant breeder to work at 

 breeding a race of red clover with a tube short enough so that even the 

 German honeybee can get at its nectar. Natural evolution hasn't done 

 this. Where red clover is at home bumblebees are found, and bumblebees 

 have no difficulty in reaching its nectar much as hawk-moths get that of a 

 moon flower, which is far beyond the reach of any kind of bee. But in 

 the South Seas, where there are no long-tongued bees, red clover finds 

 itself as unable to set seed as the German honeybee is to get at its nectar. 

 Bee and flower have evolved together, where both are at home, into a 

 harmony of structure that is helpful to them both. 



Nothing was more suggestive to Darwin in his search for evidences of 

 evolution, or modification through descent, than this sort of harmony of 

 structure and habit in flowers and insects; and one of his earliest and most 

 efifective books in bringing his views to the comprehending notice of others 

 was one dealing with the mutual relations between those freaks in flowers, 

 the orchids, and their insect visitors. 



For Sprengel's teleology, Sprengel's explanation of nectar as a means 

 of securing fertilization was sufficient. For Darwin's teleology, it carried 

 another question: Why? The geranium flower has both stamens and 

 pistil, standing in its middle. The one might fertilize the other just as well 

 as not, apparently; and yet this does not happen, for the pollen-bearing 

 anthers of the stamens drop off before the stigmas of the pistils come to 

 maturity. The same thing may be seen on any single-flowered geranium in 

 i. bay window or a greenhouse or a summer window box or flower bed, 

 only this geranium does not belong to the genus Geranium of the botan- 

 ists, but to the related African genus Pelargonium. 



Looking for a further reason, Darwin saw a step further into the mys- 

 tery when he found that these and many other flowers that ought to get 

 en without any help are as dependent upon insects through their own fail- 

 ure to bring pollen and stigma together as those are in which stamens and 

 pistils are borne in separate flowers— often on separate plants. To him, 

 nectar and its attendants— flower fragrance, color, variegation, bizarre 

 shape, long tubes, nectar guards of hairs or some other structure — meant 

 what they had meant to Sprengel, fertilization through insect aid; but 

 they meant something more, fertilization of one flower by pollen from 

 another flower — crossing. 



And still the questions multiply. Why do not all flowers have sta- 

 mens and pistil side by side? Why, when they have this structure, do 



