74 ON THE PROPAGATION 



was written at the end of the last century, by Christian 

 Conrad Sprengel, on the share which insects take in the 

 reproduction of vegetables ; in the enthusiastic warmth of 

 his investigations he wished to claim for insects the part of 

 Nature's universal gardeners. Easy as it may be to point 

 out, with an ironical smile, the narrow views of this 

 child-like, pious naturalist, in individual instances, it is 

 exceedingly difficult to find the true point of view, from 

 which to form an opinion on this apparently most strange 

 phenomenon in the life of Nature. It is, indeed, a very 

 natural connection, when a glutinous substance is produced 

 with the pollen in a plant ; it is easily comprehended 

 that the pollen must then necessarily adhere to the bees ; 

 it is certainly simplest and most natural to assume, that 

 in their subsequent rovings, this pollen becomes merely 

 accidentally deposited in its right place ; that a rivulet 

 should play in little ripples, that in air increased in weight 

 by the hot sand of Sahara, the wind should carry about 

 the light pollen of the Date-palm, are of course natural 

 events, and depend upon invariable laws of Nature. And 

 yet, when we conceive of the phenomena in a mass, as a 

 connected whole, we can neither repel nor answer the 

 questions which press upon us. What has the wind to 

 do with the Date harvest of Bileduljerid, and with the 

 sustenance of millions of men ? Knows the inanimate 

 wave, which bears the Cocoa-nut to far and uninhabited 

 islands, on the shore of which it shall germinate that thus 

 it paves the way to the further diffusion of the human 

 race ? What cares the gall-fly that on its activity depends 

 the Fig trade of Smyrna, and the food or support of 

 thousands of human beings ? Or does the beetle, whose 

 theft facilitates the increase of the Kamschatkan Lily, 

 imagine that their bulbs shall be the means to save the 



