1880. } : Botany. 289 
in the study of disteleclogy. The closeness! of these relations 
Dr. Müller has shown in previous articles! Any change in the 
one must react on the other and produce some effect. For ex- 
ample, no teleologist could desire a more perfect adaptation of 
an average, later than the large-flowered form, and 
therefore are fertilized by pollen taken from the latter, the beauti- 
ful lever-mechanism of the anthers in the small flowers becomes 
useless at once, and passes from the province of teleology into that 
of disteleology ; it becomes a rudimentary organ, and as such is 
actually found in all degrees of atrophy. Or, again, if a species 
of humble bee belonging to the most frequent visitors of these 
flowers should find it too much trouble to set the anther-levers in 
motion, and should take to perforating the floral envelopes from 
the outside and through these stealing the nectar, it would not 
only cease to employ its tongue in a way fully corresponding to 
the degree of its development, but it would render the anther- 
mechanism of the flowers entirely useless in all of its visits. In- 
deed, were the not improbable case to occur, in which other spe- 
cies of bees, finding the nectar constantly gone from these flowers, 
should entirely lose their habit of visiting them, the flowers would 
never be fertilized, and the meadow-sage would die out in the 
regions where this occurred. The change in habits of the pirati- 
cal bee would thus have as a result the changing of the habits of 
all other humble bees ; and from the moment when this occurred 
the wonderful contrivances by which no insects but these bees can 
fertilize the flowers would become not only useless but absolute- 
ly destructive, and this, without the formation of rudimentary or- 
gans. Such a bee, obtaining nectar by robbing from flowers 
adapted to its visits for their fertilization sets at nought the theory 
of teleology, and merits in a high degree the name of a distele- 
ologist. 
Of this character is the Bombus mastrucatus of the Alps; which, — 
moreover, does not content itself with breaking into and stealing 
nectar from flowers which it cannot enter inthe normal way,buthas 
c 
which are not especially adapted to bees, but are op&h to the — 
visits of all insects. But while it visits these in the normal way— 
-1| See the NATURALIST for April, 1879, p- 257. 
` 
a ash regularly when this is less trouble than perforating its oe 
orolla, ae 
