UTILITY AND DESTKUOTION OF EEPTILES. 127 



But tlie action of the creeping and swarming things of the 

 earth, though often passed unnoticed, is not without important 

 effects in tlie general economy of nature. The geographical im- 

 portance of insects proper, as well as of worms, depends prin- 

 cipally on their connection with vegetable hfe as agents of its 

 fecundation, and of its destruction. We learn from Darwin, 

 " On Yarious Contrivances by which British and Foreign Or- 

 chids are FertiHzed by Insects," that some six thousand species 

 of orchids are absolutely dependent upon the agency of insects 

 for their fertilization, and that consequently, were those plants 

 unvisited by insects, they would all rapidly disappear. What is 

 true of the orchids is more or less true of many other vegetable 

 famihes.* We do not know the limits of this agency, and many 

 of the insects habitually regarded as unqualified pests, may di- 

 rectly or indirectly perform functions as important to the most 

 valuable plants as the services rendered by certain tribes to the 

 orchids. I say dii'ectly or indirectly, because, besides the other 



titude of reptiles, worms and insects, begins to be impregnated with water. 

 Wherever we stir the earth, we are struck with the mass of organic substances 

 which in turn are developed and become transformed or decomposed. Nature 

 in these climes seems more active, more prolific, and, so to speak, more prodi- 

 gal of life." 



* Later observations of Darwin and other naturalists have greatly raised 

 former estimates of the importance of insect life in the fecundation of plants, 

 and among other remarkable discoveries it has been found that, in many cases 

 at least, insects are necessary even to monoecious vegetables, because the male 

 flower does not impregnate the female growing on the same stem, and the lat- 

 ter can be fecundated only by pollen supplied to it by insects from another 

 plant of the same species. 



"Who would ever have thought," says Preyer, "that the abundance and 

 beauty of the pansy and of the clpver were dependent upon the number of 

 cats and owls ? But so it is. The clover and the pansy can not exist without 

 the humble-bee, which, in search of his vegetable nectar, transports uncon- 

 sciously the pollen from the masculine to the feminine flower, a service which 

 other insects perform only partially for these plants. Their existence there- 

 fore depends upon that of the humble-bee. The mice make war upon this 

 bee. In their fondness for honey they destroy the nest and at the same time 

 the bee. The principal enemies of mice are cats and owls, and therefore the 

 finest clovers and the most beautiful pansies are found near villages where 

 cats and owls abound."— Preyer, D&r Kampf urn das Dasein, p. 22. See 

 also Delpino, Pemieri sulla biologia vegetale, and other works of the same 

 able observer on vegetable physiology. 



