NEWS OF SPRING 



Besides, the names which we give to the orders, species and 

 varieties end by deceiving ourselves; and we thus create 

 imaginary types which we believe to be fixed, whereas they 

 are probably only the representatives of one and the same 

 flower, which continues to modify its organs slowly in ac- 

 cordance with slow circumstances. 



The flowers arrived on this earth before the insects ; they 

 had, therefore, when the latter appeared, to adapt an en- 

 tirely new system of machinery to the habits of these unex- 

 pected collaborators. This geologically-incontestable fact 

 alone, amid all that which we do not know, is enough to estab- 

 lish evolution; and does not this somewhat vague word mean, 

 after all, adaptation, modification, intelligent progress? 



It were easy, moreover, without appealing to this pre- 

 historic event, to bring together a large number of facts which 

 would show that the faculty of adaptation and intelligent 

 progress is not reserved exclusively for the human race. 

 Without returning to the detailed chapters which I have de- 

 voted to this subject in The Life of the Bee, I will simply re- 

 call two or three topical details which are there mentioned. 

 The bees, for instance, invented the hive. In the wild and 

 primitive state and in their country of origin, they work in the 



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