ARTIFICIAL FERTILISATION. 281 



the soil. The pracfcifcifc} bee-keeper in any district is a confederate 

 "that should be welco'm* to all. The indiscriminate destruction of 

 native honey-producing flora should be carefully avoided, because 

 most of the plants that I have referred to in these articles aro 

 ■exotics, and these as a rule bloom in the early spring, and the pollen 

 and honey obtained therefrom is used in the spring and summer 

 for the raising of young brood. The stores gathered from indi- 

 genous summer and autumn flowers are to carry them over the 

 •severity of the winter. If there be not sufficient storage when the 

 •cold and wet season sets in to carry them through till springtime 

 it will cause an insufficiency of bees to do the work Nature has 

 assigned for them, and the result will be a lesser ingathering of 

 "the_ fruits of -the tillers' labours. Landowners and others cannot 

 have the remotest ide$i of the mischief they are doing to the vege- 

 table kingdom, and therefore to mankind, by the wholesale de- 

 struction of our native flora. If these are wholly, or nearly wholly, 

 •cleared from the land to the extent of giving insufficient winter 

 •storage for our bees so as to decimate them to the extent of their 

 numerical inability to carry on the necessary work of fertilisation, 

 the result will be more disastrous than droughts or floods to our 

 fruit trees, because these would cease to yield their crops. 



The sons of our agriculturists and others engaged on the land 

 are instructed in pruning, grafting, budding, and other con- 

 comitant adjuncts for obtaining a living from the soil, but none 

 ■of these are more ,n§cessary than an acquaintance with bee-manage- 

 ment — the practical part of it at least. Apart from the profits 

 from the sale of the honey, or that used in the home (there is no 

 food more healthy and invigorating), the presence of bees, on a 

 homestead are . as necessary as the implements of husbandry, nay 

 indeed more so. 



There is yet another phase of this subject I intend to deal 

 with. I have confined myself to the influence of bees on fruits; 

 here I intend dealing with them as florists. 



It has been advocated by the very highest scientific authorities 

 for the Darwinian theory of the development of species in the 

 -vegetable kingdom, th^A colours and perfume pi flowers have been 

 produced chiefly, if not entirely, by the visitation of bees and 

 •other insects — that our. brightest coloured flowers have been de- 

 veloped from progenitors of inconspicuous tints, and the highly 

 Attractive shades of the blooms of to-day are the uesult of the 

 showy character of, as regards colour, a. less-favoured earlier race. 

 The same is also said to be the reason of our highly-perfumed 



