144 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and squash are good es"amples. These vines produce two kinds 

 of flowers, — the staminate, or those producing the pollen, and 

 the pistillate, or those which produce the fruit. Now for the 

 growth of these fruits it is necessary for the pollen to be trans- 

 ferred from one flower to the other. As the flowers are at 

 considerable distance from each other, and protected from the 

 winds, probal)ly not one case would occur in a hundred flowers, 

 of the transferrcnce of pollen without the aid of insects. These 

 plants, therefore, would seem defective if we consider their ov/n 

 structure alone. If left to their own action, the species would 

 die out. In the Sandwich Islands, where no bees are found, it 

 is necessary to fertilize the large squashes by the labor of men. 

 Wliere bees are found the work is completed by them. In each 

 flower upon these vines there is a tiny cup of honey, carefully 

 covered, but the cover so thin, in three places, that the proboscis 

 of the bee pierces it with ease. While gathering the sweets of 

 the staminate flowers he becomes covered with the pollen dust, 

 because the stamens are so placed in the narrow tube of the 

 flower that he cannot steal away the sweets secreted there with- 

 out loading himself with the fertilizing powder. "When now he 

 lights in the pistillate flower, he takes its honey, but in his 

 eagerness, scatters from his wings and body the pollen grains 

 upon the pistil, and thus secures the growth of the fruit. When 

 we examine the structure of these flowers, their relation to the 

 size of the bee, and consider the fact that the honey, of no use 

 directly to the plant, but a draft upon its energies, is ready to 

 attract the bee when the pollen is fit for distribution, we see a 

 provision for the welfare of the flower, of such a nature as to 

 secure the enjoyment of a sentient being. The bee is not only 

 provided for by following his instinct, but the following of his 

 instinct is essential to the welfare of the plant. They were both 

 fashioned with reference to each other. In our pretty spring- 

 flower, the bluet or forget-me-not, we find a curious relation of 

 the seed-producing organs. The stamens are always either 

 much longer or much shorter than the pistil. When the bee 

 visits a flower with long stamens, the pollen is attached to the 

 l)ase of the probosis ; when he visits a flower with long pistil 

 this pollen comes in contact with its stigma, and at the same 

 time the middle of his ])roboscis is becoming covered with the 

 pollen from its short stamens, to fertilize the plants with short 



