74 PICTURING MIRACLES 



and on the whole well mannered creatures, have 

 been held up as models of industry and wisdom. 

 From early morn until dusk they may be watched, 

 always going from one flower to another of the same 

 kind, while the butterfly flits from one bright blos- 

 som to another, very likely of a different kind. The 

 flower as recompense to the bee for its labor, feeds 

 it with the choicest nectar, and a great surplus of 

 pollen as food for its young, enticing it with gay 

 colors and rare perfumes. Notice the bee at work; 

 how it burrows into the blossom to reach its honey 

 and how in doing so covers itself with pollen legs, 

 head, and body with innumerable tiny grains, plas- 

 tering its legs with great masses to carry home to its 

 hive to be removed by other bees and stored up for 

 food for its young. What is more natural than that 

 in its many visits, perhaps from forty to one hundred 

 or more flowers an hour, a few grains will be rubbed 

 off on the receptive stigma, and in the more or less 

 sticky sweet secretion, the pollen grain captured in 

 its inactive resting stage, will absorb enough mois- 

 ture to start active life. This, in fact, is what does 

 happen. A tube grows from it, life begins in it, pro- 

 toplasm, the basis of all life, starts circulating, first 

 in the grain, round and round, then out the tube, 

 down it to the growing tip. The protoplasm increases 

 in volume as the tube grows, moving in well defined 



