THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 177 



be produced by the integration of these infinitesimal 

 quantities, through practically infinite time. 



If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the notion of creative 

 power, acting after human fashion, it certainly is not 

 because he is unacquainted with the numberless ex- 

 quisite adaptations, on which this notion of a super- 

 natural Artificer has been founded. His book is a 

 repository of the most startling facts of this description. 

 Take the marvellous observation which he cites from 

 Dr. Kriiger, where a bucket, with an aperture serving 

 as a spout, is formed in an orchid. Bees visit the 

 flower: in eager search of material for their combs, 

 they push each other into the bucket, the drenched 

 ones escaping from their involuntary bath by the spout. 

 Here they rub their backs against the viscid stigma of 

 the flower and obtain glue; then against the pollen- 

 masses, which are thus stuck to the back of the bee 

 and carried away. ' When the bee, so provided, flies to 

 another flower, or to the same flower a second time, 

 and is pushed by its comrades into the bucket, and 

 then crawls out by the passage, the pollen-mass upon 

 its back necessarily comes first into contact with the 

 viscid stigma/ which takes up the pollen; and this is 

 how that orchid is fertilised. Or take this other case 

 of the Catasetum. ' Bees visit these flowers in order 

 to gnaw the labellum; in doing this they inevitably 

 touch a long, tapering, sensitive projection. This, 

 when touched, transmits a sensation or vibration to a 

 certain membrane, which is instantly ruptured, setting 

 free a spring, by which the pollen-mass is shot forth 

 like an arrow in the right direction, and adheres by it3 

 viscid extremity to the back of the bee/ In this way 

 the fertilising pollen is spread abroad. 



It is the mind thus stored with the choicest ma- 

 terials of the teleologist that rejects teleology seeking 



