1 86 The Great World's Farm 



flowers before its crop is filled with nectar, and both hive- 

 bees and humble-bees, especially the latter, seem generally, 

 though not invariably, to confine their visits to one kind 

 of flower on each journey — a very important matter, as 

 pollen of difl"erent sorts would in most cases be useless. 



Of course the bee may, and does, convey pollen from 

 blossom to blossom of the same plant, which may produce 

 self-fertilization of a sort; but when it has visited all the 

 blossoms on one plant, and flies off to another, the first 

 blossoms visited there must needs stand a good chance of 

 receiving pollen from the last of the former. 



That the work thus done by bees is in many cases abso- 

 lutely indispensable there is ample proof, though we may 

 not always recognize it. 



The bean-crop failed in Nicaragua just for lack of the 

 right sort of bee; and often when the young gooseberries, 

 or what should be gooseberries, wither and drop in early 

 spring, instead of swelling as they ought to do, it is not 

 so much because they have been nipped by the frost as 

 that the frost has kept the bees at home. For the pollen 

 and pistils of the gooseberry-blossoms ripen at different 

 times, so that the one must be brought to the other if the 

 ovules are to be fertilized; and if this is not done, neither 

 they nor the berry containing them can grow to their 

 proper size. 



One year there was a remarkable scarcity of holly-ber- 

 ries in different parts of the country, which some people 

 thought was accounted for by the cold weather in the 

 early part of the year. But the holly is a very hardy 

 shrub, and grows in Norway as far north as 62°, so that 

 it was not likely to have suffered from an English spring. 

 On the other hand, bees were remarkably rare that season ; 



