406 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



December 



nature in the structure and fertiliza- 

 tion of flowers. 



But Sprengel seems not to have 

 been the sort of man to whom such 

 an answer really was an answer, and 

 he looked further. It does not seem 

 to have taken him long to see that 

 while gathering their own store of 

 honey, and obviously without con- 

 sciousness that they were doing any- 

 thing else, the bees became dusted 

 with pollen from geranium stamens 

 and rubbed it off on geranium stig- 

 mas while going their rounds of the 

 flowers. This conclusion evidently 

 answered two questions — what the 

 hairs are for, and what nectar is for. 



Fashions run in fads and interests 

 quite as much as in dress. Linnaeus 

 was a great botanist; perhaps none 

 has been greater. He not only re- 

 duced a chaotic science to order, but 

 interested men in its study to a re- 

 markable extent. It is rather un- 

 fairly charged against him that be- 

 cause his service was somewhat one- 

 sided, those whose interest he awak- 

 ened were extremely one-sided, in 

 that they did not see or care for 

 much in botany beyond finding, de- 

 scribing and classifying new plants. 

 This was well enough worth doing; 

 it is not finished yet, and will not be 

 finished for many years to come; but 

 it had become so fascinating and 

 workable through the genius of the 

 Swedish master that his followe.-s 

 seized it with eagerness, and it was a 

 long time before a mind of original 



habits and impulses broke loose from 

 the train. 



The man who possessed this orig- 

 inality was Darwin, the author of 

 the now universally accepted idea of 

 organic evolution. To him has been 

 ascribed the introduction of a new 

 teleology into natural science recog- 

 nizing that structures and functions 

 are, because they are, or have been, 

 of use — not of use to man neces- 

 sarily, though man may turn them te. 

 account, but to their possessor. 



This was Sprengel's conclusion as 

 to the nectar of geranium flowers, 

 which he found led to their fertili- 

 zation. The essential difference be-' 

 tween his way of seeing it and 

 Darwin's is that he thought the en- 

 tire mechanism had been specially 

 made by the Creator as a means to 

 an end, while Darwin saw in it the 

 gradual modification of earlier struc- 

 tures because the new were helpf.il 

 in the struggle of life and their pos- 

 sessors for this reason were likely 

 to survive and pass them on to their 

 offspring. 



There is a German country saying 

 that the honey-bee was forbidden the 

 clover because she didn't keep Sun- 

 day. Beekeepers know that her 

 tongue is a little too short for the 

 honey tube of the red clover flower 

 and that she doesn't waste time in 

 trying to get what is out of her reach. 

 They know, too, that some races of 

 honey-bees really can suck the red 

 clover nectar because they have lonj- 



Das 



entdeckte Gelicimnifs 



Christian Konkad Sprengel, 



[ &i! C //„ .!-; t ^v///r 



\»ei Fi ■iedi uli \ uu.-o'iKiii j-ltrrn 



*fe 



J 



. 1 f'/ A 





Sprengel's title page. 



er tongues, and if beekeepers ever 

 want to do it they can probably set 

 an expert plant breeder to work at 

 breeding a race of red clover with a 

 tube short enough so that even the 

 German honey-bee can get at its nec- 

 tar. Natural evolution hasn't done 

 this. Where red clover is at home 

 bumblebees are found, and bumble- 

 bees have no difficulty in reaching its 

 nectar much as hawk-moths get that 

 of a moon flower which is far beyond 

 the reach of any kind of bee. But in 

 the South Seas, where there are no 

 long-tongued bees, red clover finds 

 itself as unable to set seed as the 

 German honey-bee is to get at its 

 nectar. Bee and flower have evolved 

 together where both are at home, in- 

 to a harmony of structure that is 

 helpful to them both. 



Nothing was more suggestive to 

 Darwin in his search for evidences 

 of evolution — or modification through 

 descent, than this sort of harmony of 

 structure and habit in flowers and in- 

 sects; and one of his earliest and 

 most effective books in bringing his 

 views to the comprehending notice of 

 others was the dealing with the mu- 

 tual relations between those freaks 

 in flowers, the orchids, and their in- 

 sect visitors. 



For Sprengel's teleology, Sprengel's 

 explanation of nectar as a means of 

 securing fertilization was sufficient, 

 For TJarwin's teleology, it carried 

 another question: why? The gera- 

 nium flower has both stamens and 

 pistil, standing in its middle. The 

 one might fertilize the other just as 

 well as not, apparently, and yet this 

 does not happen, for the pollen-bear- 

 ing anthers of the stamens drop off 

 before the stigmas of the pistils come 

 to maturity. The same thing may be 

 seen on any single-flowered "gera- 

 nium" in a bay window or a green- 

 house, or a summer window box or 

 flower bed (only this "geranium" 

 does not belong to the genus Gera- 

 nium of the botanists, but to the re- 

 lated African genus Pelargonium. 



Looking for a further reason, Dar- 

 win saw a step further into the mys- 

 tery when he found that these and 

 many other flowers that ought to get 

 on without any help are as dependent 

 upon insects through their own fail- 

 ure to bring pollen and stigma to- 

 gether as those are in which stamens 

 and pistils are borne in separate 

 flowers — often on separate plants. 

 To him, nectar and its attendants- 

 flower fragrance, color, variegation, 

 guards of hairs or some other struc- 

 ture—meant what they had meant to 

 Sprengel, fertilization through insect 

 aid: but they meant something more, 

 fertilization of one flower by pollen 

 from another flower-crossing. 



And still the questions multiply. 

 Why do not all flowers have stamens 

 and pistil side by side. Why when 

 they have this structure, do they not 

 time the maturity of these essential 

 parts so as to secure effective func- 

 tioning without all the nectar ma- 

 chinery? In other words Why is 

 crossing so commonly necessitated 

 and provided for? 



Science of every kind has been ad- 

 vanced by three methods; reasoning, 



