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"This antenna transmits a vibration to a certain membrane, which is instantly ruptured; this sets free a spring by which the pollen-mass is shot forth like an arrow in the right direction, and adheres by its viscid extremity to the back of the bee!"
By the peculiar arrangement of the parts of the flower, the first bee which does so carries away the pollen-mass glued to his back, and then when he has his next involuntary bath in another flower, as he crawls out the pollen-mass attached to him comes in contact with the stigma of that second flower and fertilizes it. Darwin calls the antenna.
From this simple condition, which differs but little from that of a multitude of common flowers, there are endless gradations to species in which the pollen-mass terminates in a very short, free caudicle to others in which the caudicle becomes firmly attached to the viscid matter, with the sterile stigma itself much modified.
When the bee, thus provided, flies to another flower, or to the same flower a second time, and is pushed by its comrades into the bucket and then crawls out by the passage, the pollen-mass necessarily comes first into contact with the viscid stigma, and adheres to it, and the flower is fertilised.
This antenna, when touched, transmits a sensation or vibration to a certain membrane which is instantly ruptured; this sets free a spring by which the pollen-mass is shot forth, like an arrow, in the right direction, and adheres by its viscid extremity to the back of the bee.
The pollen-masses are thus glued to the back of the bee which first happens to crawl out through the passage of a lately expanded flower, and are thus carried away. Dr. Cruger sent me a flower in spirits of wine, with a bee which he had killed before it had quite crawled out, with a pollen-mass still fastened to its back.
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