252 INDIEECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



Hasselquist and Olivier ^ both competent observers, who have 

 been on the spot.^ Our own gardeners, however, will admit 

 their obligations to bees in setting their cucumbers and melons, 

 to which they find the necessity of themselves conveying 

 pollen from a male flower, when the early season of the year 

 precludes the assistance of insects. Sprengel asserts that, ap- 

 parently with a view to prevent hybrid mixtures, insects 

 which derive their honey or pollen from different plants in- 

 discriminately will, during a whole day, confine their visits to 

 that species on which they first fixed in the morning, provided 

 there be a sufficient supply of it^ ; and the same observation 

 was long since made with respect to bees by our countryman 

 Dobbs. * 



Thus we see that the flowers which we vainly think are 



" born to blush unseen, 



And waste their fragrance on the desert air," 



though unvisited by the lord of the creation, who boasts that 

 they were made for him, have nevertheless myriads of insect 

 visitants and admirers, which, though they pilfer their sweets, 

 contribute to their fertility. 



I am, &c. 



1 Hasselquist's Travels, 253. Latr. Hist. Nat. xiii. 204. 



2 For a full account of the various opinions on this disputed point, see an in- 

 teresting article by Mr. Westwood in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 214 — 224. 



3 Willd. Grundriss,352. * phU Trans, xlvi. 536. 



