Nor is it easy to see how, on the principles of evolution alone, this faculty can have been acquired; for the remarkable point, and one apparently inexplicable on the development-theory, is this, that the two portions of the community alone concerned in the actual propagation of the race are absolutely without the special endowment of which we have been speaking, at least so far as the particular directions of its manifestation just mentioned enable us to conclude. The queen among bees, unlike her representative among wasps, is quite unable to perform any of the processes preliminary to egg-laying. She cannot secrete wax or build comb. She cannot fly abroad to collect honey. She has no means of gathering pollen. She can neither procure nor use propolis. So helpless, indeed, is she, that, bereft of attendants, she is unable to feed herself sufficiently to maintain life. The drones, if not so absolutely helpless, are equally incapable of all constructive work, of the power of collecting honey, making wax, building comb, guarding the stores against robbers, or even tending and nurturing the young brood. We see, then, the endowments of instinct in all their higher manifestations are conferred alone on the members of the community who cannot transmit them to posterity. Nor does the fact of the occasional appearance of fertile workers at all explain away the difficulty; for, as has been shown, such abnormal mothers produce only male offspring, which never inherit the special faculties of the undeveloped females, and consequently cannot transmit what they have never possessed. If asked what solution of the difficulty we are prepared to offer, we confess, with satisfaction, to the retention of the undisproved theory that the Creator has, in His own inscrutable, but all-beneficent, way, specially gifted these insects with powers of a kind adapted to the highest welfare of their race, as we also believe He has given to other orders of beings, from the ant up to man, and on to angels, faculties to be used, not only for the benefit of the individual, the species, or the genus, but for the harmonious working of the universe He has called into being. To those, at least, who rejoice to believe in a personal God, who find an atheistic cosmos the most unthinkable of notions; who see a thousand mysteries inexplicable on any theory of unintelligent "natural selection," the study of the honey-bee provides reason for, and evokes the sentiment of, sublime adoration of an infinite First Cause, _i.e._ the Deity. CHAPTER XXVI. BEES IN RELATION TO FLOWERS. Connection of Plant-life and Insect-life--Reproduction of Flowers-- Intervention of Insects--Hermaphrodite Flowers--Cross-fertilisation --Cucumbers, Melons, &c.--Poplars--Firs--Epilobium or Willow Herb-- Cincerarias--Darwin's Experiments--Nasturtium--Foxglove--Figwort-- Salvia--Heath--Strawberry, Raspberry, and Blackberry--Apple and Pear --Altruism of Bees.