The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination . ows for the sake of thegreater protection afforded. Instinctively they continued tomake an exit. The habit has never weakened, since any cater-pillar which failed to make an opening left no descendants. Coquillet would regard the behavior of Pronuba as a purelyintelligent act. There appears to be no doubt, he says,that she was in possession of the fact that, unless she did thuspollinate the flower, there would be no seed-pods for her off-spring to live on. But it seems past belief that Pronuba haslong been in possession of knowledge that has
The flower and the bee; plant life and pollination . ows for the sake of thegreater protection afforded. Instinctively they continued tomake an exit. The habit has never weakened, since any cater-pillar which failed to make an opening left no descendants. Coquillet would regard the behavior of Pronuba as a purelyintelligent act. There appears to be no doubt, he says,that she was in possession of the fact that, unless she did thuspollinate the flower, there would be no seed-pods for her off-spring to live on. But it seems past belief that Pronuba haslong been in possession of knowledge that has only recentlybecome known to the human race. It is far more probable tosuppose that the pollen was collected at first for some purposeuseful to the species, although it is difficult to imagine in whatway, for there is no reason to believe that the larvae were everfed with pollen, as in the case of the brood of bees. It will benoticed that the moth gathers the ball of pollen before shelays her eggs, and that, after they have been deposited, she 144. Fig. 67. Twig from Flower-Cluster of Yncca Whipplei I, Bud; 2, flower open; 3 flower open previous night, but now closed; 4, the little white mothFronubayuccasella flying to the flower; 5, the moth pushing down bail of pollen into thefunnel of stigma; 6, stigma enlarged. (After Kerner) THE FLOWER AND THE BEE stuffs it into the infundibuliform stigma. May this not be donefor the purpose of protecting her eggs by closing what appearsto her hke an opening into the seed-capsule? Bees and waspsregularly close the entrances to their burrows for the purposeof protecting their eggs, and it seems possible that the mothbegan filling the hollow stigma with pollen for the same that this was the fact, then the flowers thus pollinatedwould be benefited from the beginning and would producemore seed than flowers depending for pollination on some otheragency. The larvae in the seed-capsules would be assured anabundance of food, and t
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