"But connected with this, another important purpose of nature is
fulfilled, which must not here pass without special notice. The
principle, so fruitful in important social consequences among animals,
that the offspring owes its parentage jointly to two individuals of
different sexes, or, in other words, must always have a father and a
mother, equally prevails in the vegetable kingdom. There also are the
gentlemen and ladies, there also are the loves which unite them, loves
which, as well as those of superior orders of beings, have supplied a
theme for poets. Now, among the many other interesting offices with
which the Author of nature has invested the little creatures which
form the subject of this notice, not the least singular is that of
being the priests who celebrate the nuptials of the flowers. It is the
bee literally which joins the hands and consecrates the union of the
fair virgin lily and the blushing maiden rose with their respective
bridegrooms. The grains of pollen which we have been describing are
these bride and bridegrooms, and are transported on the bee from the
male to the female flower; the happy individuals thus united in the
bands of wedlock being the particular grains which the bee lets fall
from its body on the flower of the opposite sex, as it passes through
its blossom.
"And here we find another circumstance to excite our admiration of
the wise laws of that Providence, which cares for the well-being of
a little flower as much as for that of a great lord of the creation.
If the bee wandered indifferently from flower to flower without
selection, the gentlemen of one species would be mated with the ladies
of another, hybrid breeds would ensue, and the confusion of species
would be the consequence. But the bee, as knowing this, flies from
rose to rose, or from lily to lily, but never from the lily to the
rose, or from the rose to the lily."--_Lardner_.