538 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 1. 



individualism, or the power to individualize, 

 can not be explained from the standpoint of 

 any thing but spirit, or a psychological unit. 

 It is this that makes a plant a plant, a tree a 

 tree, a horse a horse, and a man a man, and 

 gives to each Its various peculiarities. He who 

 looks in any other direction for an explanation 

 of the phenomena of the universe is sure to 

 meet with final disappointment. 



I admit that food and surroundings may have 

 much to do with temperament, with shaping 

 the acquired habits of animals and men. You 

 take a child born of white parents, intelligent 

 and refined, and place it in the arms of an ig- 

 norant negro nurse, and let it see no one else 

 until it reaches manhood or womanhood, and it 

 will talk and act in many respects like a negro, 

 notwithstanding its inherited tendencies. 



There is, however, a wide difference between 

 acquired habits and inherited tendencies. One 

 of them, as I have shown, is latent in the cells 

 from which the organism springs, and the other 

 impresses itself on the completed organism 

 through its various susceptibilities; or, to put 

 it differently, one is the outgrowth of environ- 

 ment, and the other of cell-formation. 



That queens may not imbibe bad traits from 

 their environment, I am not prepared to say; 

 but this has nothing to do with bringing out 

 qualities latent in the germ or sperm cell. 

 However, as all variations tend to become he- 

 reditary, that which is imbibed in one genera- 

 tion may become innate and permanent in re- 

 mote future generations. 



Dr. M. seems to hold that the act of genera- 

 tion produces the germ, or, in other words, that 

 the germ is furnished by the male. I do not so 

 understand it, and can not see how Dr. M. can 

 hold such a theory, knowing what he does 

 about the economy of a bee-hive. I know this 

 is an old theory. Agassiz says, " At one time 

 physiologists did not doubt that the spermatic 

 particles were actually the beginning of the 

 new germ." But I can not see how any one ac- 

 quainted with the theory of parthogenesis and 

 the process of germ-development can entertain 

 such an idea. Darwin says, "The belief that it 

 is the function of the spermatozoa to communi- 

 cate life to the ovule seems a strange one, see- 

 ing that the unlmpregnated ovule is. already 

 alive, and generally undergoes a certain amount 

 of independent development." Some very 

 learned men hold, or have held, that " the life 

 principle is in the sperm-cell;" but I think 

 modern science has demonstrated that it is not 

 any more than it is in the germ-cell. 



After all, is not this theory the culmination 

 of male egotism, which all down the ages has 

 relegated the female to an inferior place? I am 

 glad to say that the ant and the bee have plac- 

 ed the seal of falsehood on this relic of barbar- 

 ism. The male has nothing to do with the 

 formation of the germ, and in many cases noth- 

 ing to do with its perfect development. Where 



the animal is the product of the union of two 

 cells (and most animals are. as I remarked be- 

 fore), the union of the sperm-cell with the 

 germ-cell imparts to it a certain vis enolvendi, 

 power of development; but the germ was there 

 with all its possibilities and maternal inherited 

 tendencies before the union took place. As both 

 cells enter into the composition of the new or- 

 ganism, it will be more or less influenced by 

 each of them, varying according to the pre-po- 

 tency of the cells. Spencer finds the necessity 

 for this union in the fact that they had reached 

 a state of equilibrium, whatever that may 

 mean, and the union breaks it up and growth 

 begins. Darwin suggests that the union is 

 made necessary because the cells possess too lit- 

 tle formative matter for independent develop- 

 ment. 



These will do for working explanations; but 

 I apprehend there is a reason lying back of all 

 of these theories, which we do not fully under- 

 stand. 



St. Joseph, Mo. 



WHY FLOWERS ARE BEAUTIFUL. 



BY THE EDITOR OF POPULAR SCIENCE NEWS. 



[We take pleasure in copying th'' fo'lnwing 

 from the Popular Scieyice News, of New York, 

 of a recent date. It contains somcihing that 

 bears more or less directly on our late sympo- 

 sium on bees and fruit, and we are sure it will 

 be read with interest. — Ed.] 



Every seed is but a crystallized memory of the 

 past liistory of its kind, and every plant the realiza- 

 tion in fact and experience of the grandest features 

 of that memory. That a developing seed could re- 

 ceive a fitness in its structure for a wet or rocky 

 soil while grown upon that wliich is dry and loamy 

 seems impossible. That such fitness should he car- 

 ried as a message from plants of the same species 

 miles awaj', and taught to tluit seed before it had 

 scarcely begun to develop in the parent fiower, 

 appears as if beyond sane belief. All tliis is never- 

 theless but a sober statement of what lias been 

 discovered by actual experiment. Two trees, 

 shrubs, or herbs, remote from each otlier, can inter- 

 blend their natures and combine tlicir powers 

 through the medium of a tiny dust-like particle of 

 pollen. The seeds and plants derived from the 

 union possess in large degree the fitnesses of both. 

 United through its pollen witli others having differ- 

 ent powers and experiences, a new race is born with 

 a double capacity of adaptation. Professor Charles 

 Darwin experimentally proved that crosses between 

 individuals give vigor in proportion to tlie variety 

 of conditions to which the parents are subjected, 

 and not in proportion to remoteness of kin. Pox- 

 glove (Digitalis purpurea, Lin.), Fig. 1, wlien crossed 

 from phmts growing near togetlier in similar soil, 

 shade, and surroundings, nevor gave as good seed 

 as when crossed with pollen from plants of a remote 

 neighborhood. ("Cross and Self Fertilization," 

 page 447.) Tlie fiower-stems produced in the two 

 cases were as 100 to 47, and the average height as 

 100 to 70. Plants near of kin, but raised in remote 

 regions, when cross-fertiUzed with each other gave 



