Conversely, too, there are no adaptations in the insects which are
useful only to the flowers, and which are not of some use, directly or
indirectly, to the insect itself. Bees and butterflies certainly carry
the pollen from one flower to the stigma of another, but they are not
impelled to do this by a special instinct; they are forced to do it
by the structure of the flower, which has its stamens so placed and
arranged that they must shake their pollen over the visitor, or it may
be that the anthers are modified into stalked, viscid pollinia which
spring off at a touch, and fix themselves, so to speak, on the insect's
head. And even this is not all in the case of the orchis, for the
insect would never of its own accord transfer these pollinia on to the
stigma of the next flower; this is effected by the physical peculiarity
which causes the pollinia, after a short time, to bend forwards on the
insect's head.
All this fits in as well as possible with the hypothesis: how could an
instinct to carry pollen from one flower to the stigma of another have
been developed in an insect through natural selection, since the insect
itself has nothing to gain from this proceeding? Accordingly, we never
find in the insect any pincers or any kind of grasping organ adapted
for seizing and transmitting the pollen.
There is, however, one very remarkable case in which this appears to
be so, indeed really is so, and nevertheless it is not contradictory
to, but is corroborative of, the theory of selection. The excellent
American entomologist, Riley, established by means of careful
observations that the large white flowers of the Yucca are fertilized
by a little moth which behaves in a manner otherwise unheard of among
insects. Only the females visit the flowers, and they at once busy
themselves collecting a large ball of pollen. To this end they have
on the maxillary palps (Fig. 52, _C_, _mxp_) a long process (_si_),
curved in the form of a sickle, and covered with hairs, which probably
no other Lepidopteron possesses, with the help of which the moth
very quickly sweeps together a ball of pollen, it may be three times
the size of her own head. With this ball the insect flies to the
next flower, and there she lays her egg, by means of an ovipositor
otherwise unknown among Lepidoptera (Fig. 52, _A_, _op_), in the pods
of the flower. Finally, she pushes the ball of pollen deep into the
funnel-shaped stigmatic opening on the pistil (Fig. 51, _n_), and so
effects the cross-fertilization. The ovules develop, and when the
caterpillars emerge from the egg four to five days later they feed on
these until they are ready to enter on the pupa stage. Each little
caterpillar requires about eighteen or twenty seeds for its nourishment
(Fig. 52, _B_, _r_).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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