BEES AND FLOWERS. 241 
you but very little, but I can promise you that the 
more you examine, the more you will find marvellous 
histories such as these in simple field-flowers. 
Long as we have known how useful honey was to 
the bee, and how it could only get it from flowers, 
yet it was not till quite lately that we have learned to 
follow out Sprengel's suggestion, and to trace the use 
which the bee is to the flower. But now that we have 
once had our eyes opened, every flower teaches us 
something new, and we find that each plant adapts 
itself in a most wonderful way to the insects which 
visit it, both so as to provide them with honey, and at 
the same time to make them unconsciously do it good 
service. 
And so we learn that even among insects and 
flowers, those who do most for others, receive most 
in return. The bee and the flower do not either of 
them reason about the matter, they only go on living 
their little lives as nature guides them, helping and 
improving each other. Think for a moment how it 
would be, if a plant used up all its sap for its own life, 
and did not give up any to make the drop of honey 
in its flower. The bees would soon find out that 
these particular flowers were not worth visiting, and 
the flower would not get its pollen-dust carried, and 
would have to do its own work and grow weakly and 
small. Or suppose, on the other hand, that the bee bit 
a hole in the bottom of the flower, and so got at the 
honey, as indeed they sometimes do ; then she would 
not carry the pollen-dust, and so would not keep up 
the healthy strong flowers which make her daily food. 
But this, as you see, is not the rule. On the con- 
17 
