CHAPTER VII.

THE BEE IN THE FIELDS.

"When the plant attains to the flower, the climax of its existence,--when it assumes its symmetrical outlines, its perfumes, its colours, and a certain degree of animal irritability,--it emerges from its condition of isolation, and connects itself more closely with the great Whole. But it remains fixed in one place, without any reciprocation of love. The animal, on the contrary, is movement itself, and manifests its joy in living by its capricious mobility. Then the captive plant casts a glance of amicable confidence on the animal's life of freedom, offers it the abundance of its substance, and for sole reward expects that it will achieve its fecundation. Then, too, as an elder brother might do, the animal assists the plant, and affords it in its dependent state the succour of liberty. But, for this purpose, the animal must be completely free, I would say winged, bound up with the vegetable life which was its kindly nurse. Behold the insect, love's messenger and mediator to the plants, their propagator, and the zealous instrument of their fertilization.

"With a maternal care, the plant provides a place in its own body where the insect's egg may be developed. It nourishes the young larva which as yet is incapable of action, but which, in due time, emerging from its vegetation in the egg, will move freely to and fro, and seek its own sustenance. The creative fecundity of the plant easily replaces whatever the insect has extracted from it; and thus both animal and plant harmoniously attain to the climax of existence.

"The animal, from its low sphere of nutrition, rises to a more elevated sphere, the pure need of motion, and the pursuit of love. The plant, it is true, does not soar so high; but its flower is a bright dream of a higher state of being,--a dream which, though fugitive, proceeds, by means of its fruits, to secure the conservation of the species. The blossoming plant and the winged insect reach, as if by concert, an analogous development, manifested by their colours, their beautiful symmetrical forms, and their refinement of substance. Papilionaceous flowers, for instance, might almost be called insects-become-plants.

"This harmonic existence marches forward with the same rhythm as the moments of the day. Each flower to whose juice an insect is assigned expands at the hour when its life is most intense, and shuts at the hour of its repose. Thus they feel their unity; love attracts them one towards the other. Here the plant plays the part of the female, the fixed basis of creation, absorbed in nature. The insect resembles the tiny male who frees himself from earth and curvets in the air; recalled, nevertheless, by the plant to the oneness of the terrestrial whole. It is a winged anther, which diffuses life among the flowers."[R]

[Footnote R: Burdach, bk. ii., c. 3.]

What the wind accomplishes hap-hazard, flinging abroad in capricious showers the generative elements, the insect performs through love,--the direct love of its species, the _in_direct and confused love of the amiable auxiliary which welcomes and nourishes it, which will hereafter nourish also its eggs and continue its maternal work. Its action, therefore, is not external and superficial, like that of the wind; it is internal and penetrating. The ardent, curious insect will not suffer itself to be checked by the light and trivial obstacles with which vegetable modesty surrounds the threshold of its mysteries; it boldly dashes aside the veil, and enters into the inmost economy of the flower. It seizes, it pillages, and it carries away, assured that all it does will be approved. The flower, in its powerless expansion, rejoices only too keenly in the deeds of these thievish liberators, who will transport its desire whither it would fain transport itself. "Take," she says, "and take yet more!" The insect then exhausts its utmost effort; each of its hairs becomes a tiny magnetic dart, which attracts and wishes to attract. Would that it might be enveloped in these points, and over all its surface (like the lightning conductor) concentrate this treasure of vegetable electricity! Such is its aspiration. An aspiration realized in the higher insect, in the bee, which bristles everywhere with a magnetic apparatus,--the bee, predestined by the tools peculiar to it, both to its little individual industry of honey-making, and to the grand, general, universal industry of the fecundation, of plants.

It is an admirable creature, and what the great physiologist has just said of the loves of the flower and the insect applies particularly to it; except with this notable distinction on the part of the bee, that it robs the flower only of that noble luxuriance of life which it lavishes upon love. The bee does not establish its cradle in the plant that the young may thence derive its sole sustenance, and gradually devour its nurse. Instead of depositing its egg, and exposing it to the hazards of the vegetable existence, as the butterfly does with its future caterpillar, the bee economizes the plant, and, without attacking it, borrows from it the precious materials which its art works up into palaces of alabaster, amber, or of gold, where its children will in due time repose.

The innocency of the bee is one of its lofty attributes, no less than its miraculous art. Its sting is simply a defensive and indispensable weapon, not against man-with whom, of its own accord, it does not wage war--but against the cruel wasps, its terrible enemies. The bee, on the other hand, injures none. It does not live by death; its inoffensive life does not demand the sacrifice of other lives. It stimulates innumerable existences; it vivifies and fecundates them. There is no uncultivated desert, no wild, bare region which it does not animate,--where it does not infuse fresh vigour into the languishing vegetation, urging the plants to bud, watching over and inspecting them. It reproaches them with their slothfulness; and as soon as they open to the influence of love-these poor dumb virgins!--it establishes between them the requisite interpreters, carries off in its murmurs their pollen and perfume, and harmonizes the aromas which are their blossoms of thought.

This process begins in the month of March. When an uncertain but already potent sun reawakes the sleeping sap, the tiny flowers of the fields, the wild violet, the Easter-daisy of the sward, the buttercup of the hedgerow, the precocious gillyflower, expanding, perfume the air. But their expansion lasts only for a moment. Barely open at noon, by three o'clock they fold themselves up again, and veil their shivering stamens. In this brief interval of gentle heat you may see a little wan-looking creature, completely clad but very chilly, which also ventures to unfurl its wings. The bee quits its city, in the knowledge that the manna is ready for it and its little ones.

A little matter then, it is true, but most cradles are empty at this epoch. The great fecundity of the mother bee still lurks concealed in her bosom. The regular and rapid incubation, which might suffice to create a world, will not commence until a much later period,--the sunny time of May.

How admirable is this agreement! Most of the shivering flowers, like the shivering bee, wait a more equable season before they bare to the sun their corolla, too delicate to endure the caprices of April.

It is pleasant to watch the intercourse between these charming creatures. The docile flower inclines and yields to the insect's unquiet movements. The shrine which it had closed against the winds, and the inquisitive glance, it opens to the beloved bee, which, impregnated by it, speeds afar on her message of love. The delicious precautions which Nature has taken to veil from profane eyes the mysteries enacted therein, do not delay for a moment the audacious seeker, who is completely at home, so to speak, and has no fear of being considered an intruder. One flower, for example, is protected by a couple of petals which join together in the form of an arch (as, for instance, the iris on the border of the waters, which in this manner defends from the rain its delicate little lovers). Another, like the sweet-pea, dons a kind of helmet, whose vizor must be lifted by its suitor.

The bee takes its stand at the bottom of these recesses worthy of the fairies, covered with the softest tapestry, under fantastic pavilions, with walls of topaz, and roofs of sapphire. Paltry comparisons these, for they are borrowed from dead gems, while the flowers live, and feel, and desire, and wait. And if the happy conqueror of the little hidden kingdoms,--if the imperious violator of their innocent barriers, the insect, mingles and confuses everything, they readily whisper its pardon, overwhelm it with their sweetnesses, and load it with their honey.

There are favoured localities, and there are happy hours, where and when the bee, while gathering its harvest, accomplishes--chaste toiler!--myriads of marriages. On the coasts, for example, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the savage sea, where one would hardly expect to meet with such pacific idyls, should there be but one shadowy, secure, and warm recess, Nature never fails, in the warm and humid mildness of that maternal retreat, to create a little chosen world; and there the flower distils to the bee its sweetest nectar,--there the bee assuages the impetuous yearning of the flower.

Genial, bland, and still is the hour which precedes the evening. Caressed by the last rays of the sun, whose warmth it preserves within its bosom, besprinkled in its corolla by the light and already radiant mist, the flower becomes conscious of two lives and a twofold electricity; it is urged to love, and it loves! The stamens blaze forth, and scatter abroad their cloud of incense. Then at that charming and sacred hour let the mediatrix come; let the Samaritan bee appear! Let her collect the sweet odours dispersed by the evening breeze; let her redivide them with wise forethought, giving here and taking there! The blossoms are no longer solitary; through the agency of the bee, the meadow has been converted into a society where all understand and all love each other, initiated into the hymeneal rites by their friendly little high-priest.

It is not a less important duty for the bee to rise at an early hour and be present at the moment when the flower--which has slumbered under the penetrating dew (exhaled by its divine master, father, and lover, the sun)--awakes, and recovers its consciousness. Struck by the sympathetic beam, it no longer resists; it gives up the softened essence of its choicest sweetness; it becomes, as it were, a tiny fountain, which distils honey drop by drop. Opportunely comes the bee; its work here is very nearly completed: the sweet treasure, finely prepared in that hour of perfection, will entail but little labour. It bears it off to its children: "Eat; it is the soul of the blossom."

But in the noonday heat will she remain inactive? The burning sun and dry air have withered up the blossoms of the plain. But those of the woods, sheltered by the fresh cool shades, present their cups brimming over; those of the murmurous brooks, and silent and deep marshes, are then instinct with vitality. The forget-me-not dreams, and weeps tiny tears of nectar. Even the white water-lily, in her pale virginity, yields a rare treasure of love.

"Night does not injure the bee, but cold is extremely harmful. Such is her conscientiousness, that, in order to avoid losing a day's labour in our brief summers, she takes too little heed of the sudden returns of winter, of the sharp caprices of the north wind, which sometimes visit us on the finest days. Insects of inferior intelligence, but also less industrious, perfectly understand the secret of escaping its influence. In their prudent idleness they say to one another, 'Tomorrow! Let us keep holiday!' And they patiently wait for one, or two, or more days, until the wicked spirit of the north has abandoned its evil mood. But those who have charge of souls, and a large family to maintain,--those who know that a mild winter may chance to keep their offering awake, and, accordingly, famished, will hesitate before they take a single day's repose.

"And, therefore, on the cold mornings of a June not less bleak than March, they do not fear to rush boldly into the fields. But they are more valiant than robust; the cold catches them, and I have known them drag their limbs to my windows, faltering and half-paralyzed. They have made no attempt to escape; they have suffered themselves to be taken prisoners. They were in a scared condition; still bearing the signs of their courageous and indefatigable work, impregnated with the dust of flowers, and their little, baskets loaded and overloaded with pollen. They seemed to say:--'We are no sluggards. On the contrary, in the cold hours of morning, when many are still asleep, we have already completed a day's work. But, alas, the times are so hard, and the north wind is so keen! Behold us half-frozen. A moment's hospitality, I pray you.'

"Who would not respect the misfortune of such blameless and over-eager workers? I lent them not only a roof, and the warmth of an apartment closed to the wind and open to the sun, but immediately improvised for them a friendly repast. Where? At the bottom of a sugar-basin.

"The chilly creatures, having revived at a genial beam their lost warmth, and restored to a good condition all the little electric world of hairs with which they bristle, began the exploration of their temporary prison, and were agreeably surprised to find the crystal a dining-hall. With a good appetite, seating themselves at the table, they attacked a fragment of sugar, and sucked up with their proboscis all the sweetness they could find. When they had finished their repast, and were completely restored, were fluttering to and fro, demanding the way out, I set them free, without causing them to lose one moment of a day already far advanced. With a rapid flight, charmed by the noonday sun, they returned to their occupations, distinctly humming:--'Farewell, madam, and many thanks!'"