178 
REVIEWS. 
INSECTS AND FLOWERS: THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS.* 
T O be at once Vice-Cbancellor of the University of London, Member of 
Parliament, and a leader among- the many financial authorities of that 
centre of financial speculation, Lombard Street, is no meaji feat ; for as- 
suredly any one of these positions would satisfy the ambition of most men. 
But when, in addition to these manifold distinctions, are cited the Fellowship 
of the Royal Society, and the authorship of some of the most important 
papers and works on ethnography and biology, we know of but one man in 
the long list of naturalists who can lay claim to the position. And that 
man is Sir John Lubbock, the author of the excellent little work that is now 
under notice. In this book the author has given, in part from his own ob- 
servation, but principally from Darwin’s and F. Muller’s able researches, a 
tolerably complete account, so far as we yet know, of the different contri- 
vances by which insects are enabled to fertilize plants. He has only taken 
the flowering species in hand in the present work, but he has dealt with them 
fully, and has given his descriptions in such admirably terse and clear Eng- 
lish, that almost any person, be he scientific or not, can follow his remarks. 
First of all he gives an account in brief terms of Mr. Darwin’s results, and 
shows how essential to plants is cross-fertilization, and in connection with 
the necessity for insect action in the work of pollen-removing he cites a 
remark of some interest from some of Mr. Darwin’s writings, viz. that it is 
u an invariable rule that when a flower is fertilized by the wind it never 
has a gaily-coloured corolla,” of which we have numerous examples in the 
conifers, birches, poplars, and grasses. Then he passes on to the considera- 
tion of the structure of the insects’ mouth-parts and limbs, to show how 
they are employed in fertilization ; and here he makes the following interest- 
ing observations : 11 That bees are attracted by and can distinguish colours was 
no doubt a just inference from the observations on their relation to flowers, 
but I am not cognisant of any direct evidence on the subject. I thought it 
therefore worth while to make some experiments, and a selection from them 
will be recorded in the forthcoming volume of the ‘ Journal of the Linnean 
Society.’ I placed slips of glass with honey on’ paper of various colours, 
accustoming different bees to visit special colours, and when they had made 
* u On British Wild Flowers, considered in Relation to Insects.” By Sir 
John Lubbock, Bart., F.R.S., M.P., Vice-Chancellor of the University of 
London. London : Macmillan, 1875. 
