196 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 



flower-visiting insects, which carry the fer- 

 tilising 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 connec- 

 tion 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. 



iDarwin 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 fer- 

 tilising 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 in- 

 side the ovule, and as this develops into an 



