THE CLOVER BLOOMS. 79 



arc much devoured by cats ; and the cats, finally, arc 

 chiefly kept by old maids. The more cats, therefore, 

 the fewer the harvest-mice, and the fewer harvest-mice 

 the more bees. Omitting the old maids as perhaps too 

 curious an addition to the series, the chain of causes and 

 effects well illustrates the infinite and infinitesimal inter- 

 action, the constant cycle of relations, obtaining between 

 every part of the or<;anic world. 



I pick a head of red clover and a stalk of this creep- 

 ing white kind, to look into them a little more closely. 

 First, let us begin upon the more normal red form. It 

 is made up of some thirty or forty tiny purplish pea- 

 flowers, each with a little red hairy calyx of its own ; 

 the whole set of hairs mingling together below so as to 

 form a perfect miniature forest, through which no thieving 

 ant can possibly force his way to the honey store. Nothing 

 bothers ants like hairs ; and Sir John Lubbock found that 

 they could not climb up on to a table or safe if only a 

 little fur was gummed around its legs. But though the 

 florets of the clover arc essentially pea-flowers, they are 

 not pea-flowers of the common and ordinary type. 

 They do not consist, like the blossoms of the garden-pea 

 or the laburnum, of four distinct and separate petals : 

 all their parts have grown together at the base by the 

 claws, so as to form a single deep and narrow tube. 

 That makes them such favourites with the bees : while, 

 conversely, it is the constant selective action of the bees 

 which has enabled them to assume this specialised form. 

 The most tubular blossoms are tliose the bee always 

 chooses by preference ; and when the tube is so deep 

 and narrow as it is in red clover, the bee knows that no 

 other insect can reach the nectar but himself, and so 



