274 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

 ARTIFICIAL FERTILISATION. 



"What man has done man can do," is a very wise old saw, 

 ■or a truism that cannot be disputed; and what insects have done, 

 in many instances man can do to his advantage and the advantage 

 of his race. These tiny workers are accredited with unfolding and 

 throwing light upon many a discovery, and man is said to have 

 reoeived some valuable and useful hints, by noting the methods or 

 the results of some of their habits and constructions. Science 's 

 said to have taught us that insects have played no inconsiderable 

 part in the development of the plant world; how the ocean was 

 the birthplace and cradle of vegetable life, or how the early aqua- 

 tic forms of it developed their terrestrial representatives, and these 

 again from the lower forms of fruit and grain to the highest tpyss 

 -we now enjoy. Whether it was by those disputable points "spon- 

 taneous generation" or evolution from "mere specks of green 

 jelly" seen floating in the sea, and the variations, ensuing from their 

 battling and struggling for life, and the "survival of the fittest, ' 

 or the ones naturally selected and taken by man under his care 

 and guardianship, matters not, as far as the power we now have 

 in producing variations in the vegetable kingdom, and from these 

 selecting the ones that will administer most to our medicinal and 

 dietary wants, or those having ornamental colours and forms to 

 please the eye and decorate our surroundings, making life worth 

 living, is immaterial to this portion of our subject. 



That the bee is, by the part she plays in fertilisation, our 

 greatest fruit-producer, must be conceded by those who have looked 

 into the subject, and she is such an absolute adjunct to the or- 

 chardist and others, that to interfere with the bee-keeper would 

 be suicidal to all who are engaged in the reproduction of vegetable 

 life. 



I have mentioned that bees have been accredited with the 

 destruction of some of our choicest annual vegtables by inoculation, 

 and that, to a certain extent, they are guilty ; but the want of 

 knowledge in men who are engaged in the work of supplying or 

 cultivating such vegetables is the true cause of the disappearance 

 •or injury to the varieties referred to. I have said the inoculation 

 of annuals, for it is immaterial how the fruits and seeds of trees 

 and such-like that are reproduced by grafting, budding, cuttings, 

 offsets, &c, are inoculated or cross-pollenised, because the im- 

 mediate fruit or flower is in no way improved or injured by it. 



