196 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 



insects, which carry the fertilising golden dust 

 or pollen from blossom to blossom. This is 

 certainly one of the most important linkages in 

 the world. 



Darwin's " Cats and Clover" Story. In his 

 immortal book, The Origin of Species (1859), 

 Charles Darwin told the story of the connection 

 between cats and clover a story that soon 

 went round the world. It is a very familiar 

 story, but it should not become trite to us, for it 

 was the first vivid story of its kind, and it was 

 told by the greatest of all naturalists. 



Darwin took one hundred heads of the big 

 purple clover and put muslin bags round them, 

 so that the air and the sunshine could get in, 

 but no humble-bees, which he knew to be the 

 usual visitors of the clover. From these plants 

 he got not a single seed, while from another 

 hundred heads close by, to which the bees had 

 access, he got 27,000 seeds. The fertilising 

 dust or pollen which the bees carry from one 

 clover blossom to another makes the possible 

 seeds into real seeds, that is to say, embryo 

 plants. A nucleus from the pollen-grain, which 

 grows down the pistil of the flower to the 

 ovules, fertilises an egg-cell inside the ovule, 

 and as this develops into an embryo-plant, the 



