RESULT. 349 



If all these are to be called, less or more, judges, some 

 of them are already known to us as express experts, true 

 brothers of the craft. Of such experts and brothers, 

 indeed, it is probably Sir Joseph Hooker alone in whom, 

 as he was (to us) at last, there is scarcely a sign of short- 

 not a bit more valid than the nursery rhyme of the dog that worried 

 the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house 

 that Jack built ? 



In the first place, unless the story be repeated elsewhere than 

 where I have read it (namely, in the Origin), it is Col. Newman, and 

 not Mr. Darwin, "has shown" whatever it may be that has been 

 shown : Mr. Darwin only relatively reports. Whatever has been a 

 problem to Mr. Darwin and specially interests him, usually, or at 

 least frequently, reappears in his correspondence. I can find no 

 trace of the red-clover story in the three volumes of the Life and 

 Letters. Even when it occurs to Mr. Darwin to notice the like 

 peculiarity of relation as between the scarlet-runner and the same 

 said humble-bee, at the moment, too, that the whole general subject 

 of fertilising insects is expressly before him (iii. 259 seq.), I cannot 

 find him to mention red clover at all. Of course, it may be a matter 

 rather of failed memory than of modified judgment that is concerned 

 in the omission. 



However that may be, it is by no means certain that the " logical 

 connection " in reference is either exclusive or strict ; at the same 

 time that we are probably in presence here of one of those occasions 

 on which, as his own words are, he (Mr. Darwin) " extensively used 

 facts observed by others." The sequence red clover, humble-bees, 

 field-mice, and cats really appears at p. 57 of the Origin, but on the 

 authority named, of Col. Newman. Field-mice do destroy the 

 combs and nests of humble-bees ; but there are other enemies most 

 destructive to these latter, as ants, wood-lice, earwigs, spiders, cater- 

 pillars, birds, particularly the house-lark and the swallow, and, most 

 formidable of all, the wasp and the hornet. Even were there not a 

 single field-mouse in existence, then, still, to the loss of the clover, 

 there might be variously a destruction of humble-bees. 



Again, from p. 75 of the Origin, it is quite evident that even with 

 the total destruction of the humble-bees themselves, it is by no moans 

 necessary that the red clover should die out along with thorn. Tho 

 Ligurian bee, almost already a hive-bee, and freely crossing with it. 

 has alxmt as ready access to the red clover as the humble-bee itself 



