LOVE AMONG IXOWIRS. 73 



of the Virgin Mary, I love not to have such associations 

 destroyed, and it was by no means a pleasurable discovery to 

 me, when I one day. ascertained that these threads were pro- 

 duced by a species of spider. A grain of groundsel sur- 

 mounted by a little downy paralchute, sails over me through' 

 the air, to go and sow itself at a distance ; a seed of the wall- 

 flower, flat and light, is carried by the wind to the top of an 

 old wall, or into the fissures of the tower of the church, to 

 decorate them with its golden stars. There is a bee just gone 

 by, with its feet laden with the yellow dust it has collected 

 from the stamens of flowers; and the wind blows the yellow 

 dust about in all directions. 



I have seen flowers which contain in their corollas both the 

 husband and wife ; I have seen others which bear them sepa- 

 rated, but upon the same plant; there are, however, trees 

 and flowers which only produce separately, males or females, 

 and these are frequently planted by chance at a great distance 

 from each other; there would be no loves, no marriages, no 

 reproduction, but the air takes upon it the charge of bearing 

 the caresses of the husband to his spouse, in the form of 

 those little yellow bags, which contain a fructifying powder. 

 Bees and other insects which fly from flower to flower, are 

 little messengers who carry perfumed kisses from the bride- 

 groom to the bride ; it is thus they repay the hospitality they 

 receive in the rich corollas and nectaries filled with delicious 

 honey, and thus the wife receives in her bosom the message 

 of her absent husband. 



The facility which nature has accorded to plants to corre- 

 spond thus intimately through the track of the air, and by the 

 means of insects, bears with it consequences of which certainly 

 we ought not to complain ; but which, nevertheless, in a human 

 point of view, must appear as a means of diseases. I will 

 show you in what its consequences consist. There is a white 

 pink, which, if left to the regular course of nature, would 

 only bear white pinks; but frequently, by the intervention of 

 bees or other insects, the white pinks become red, or white 

 spotted with red. It is to such errors, if errors they can be 

 called, which produce such beautiful effects, that we owe the 

 numerous varieties of flowers with which our gardens are 

 ornamented. 



