YELLOW AND ORANGE FLOWERS
"All variations which render the blossoms more attractive, either
by scent, color, size of corolla, or quantity of nectar, make the
insect visit more sure, and therefore the production of seed more
likely. Thus, the conspicuous blossoms secure descendants which
inherit the special variations
of their parents, and so,
generation after generation, we have selections in favor of
conspicuous flowers, where insects are at work. Their
appreciation of color, because it has brought the blossom
possessing it more immediately into their view, and more surely
under their attention, has enabled them, through the ages, to be
preparing the specimens upon which man now operates, he taking up
the work where they have left it, selecting, inoculating, and
hybridizing, according to his own rules of taste, and developing
a beauty which insects alone could never have evolved. His are
the finishing touches, his the apparent effects, yet no less is
it true, that the results of his floriculture would never have
been attainable without insect helpers. It is equally certain,
that the beautiful perfume, and the nectar also, are, in their
present development, the outcome of repeated insect selection,
and here, it seems to me, we get an inkling of a deep mystery:
Why is life, in all its forms, so dependent upon the fusion of
two individual elements? Is it not, that thus the door of
progress has been opened? If each alone had reproduced, itself
all-in-all, advance would have been impossible, the insect and
human florists and pomologists, like the improvers of animal
races, would have had no platform for their operation, and not
only the forms of life, but life itself would have been
stereotyped unalterably, ever mechanically giving repetition to
identical phenomena." - Frank R. Cheshire in "Bees and
Bee-keeping."
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