THE PLANT AND THE INSECT. 
303 
What the wind accomplishes hap-hazard, flinging abroad in caprici¬ 
ous showers the generative elements, the insect performs through love, 
—the direct love of its species, the indirect and confused love of the 
amiable auxiliary which welcomes and nourishes it, which will here¬ 
after nourish also its eggs and continue its maternal work. Its action, 
therefore, is not external and superficial, like that of the wind; it is 
internal and penetrating. The ardent, curious insect will not suffer 
itself to be checked by the light and trivial obstacles with which 
vegetable modesty surrounds the threshold of its mysteries; it boldly 
dashes aside the veil, and enters into the inmost economy of the 
flower. It seizes, it pillages, and it carries away, assured that all it 
does will be approved. The flower, in its powerless expansion, rejoices 
only too keenly in the deeds of these thievish liberators, who will 
transport its desire whither it would fain transport itself. “ Take,” she 
says, “ and take yet more! ” The insect then exhausts its utmost 
effort; each of its hairs becomes a tiny magnetic dart, which attracts 
and wishes to attract. Would that it might be enveloped in these 
points, and over all its surface (like the lightning conductor) concen¬ 
trate this treasure of vegetable electricity ! Such is its aspiration. An 
aspiration realized in the higher insect, in the bee, which bristles every¬ 
where with a magnetic apparatus,—the bee, predestined by the tools 
peculiar to it, both to its little individual industry of honey-making, 
and to the grand, general, universal industry of the fecundation of 
plants. 
It is an admirable creature, and what the great physiologist has 
just said of the loves of the flower and the insect applies particularly 
to it; except with this notable distinction on the part of the bee, that 
it robs the flower only of that noble luxuriance of life which it lavishes 
upon love. The bee does not establish its cradle in the plant that 
the young may thence derive its sole sustenance, and gradually devour 
its nurse. Instead of depositing its egg, and exposing it to the hazards 
of the vegetable existence, as the butterfly does with its future cater¬ 
pillar, the bee economizes the plant, and, without attacking it, borrows 
from it the precious materials which its art works up into palaces of 
alabaster, amber, or of gold, where its children will in due time repose. 
