File:American insects (1905) (14578776529).jpg

Identifier: americaninsects00kellog (find matches)
Title: American insects
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Kellogg, Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman), 1867-1937
Subjects: Insects
Publisher: New York, H. Holt and Company
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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life of many insect kinds, pro-found modifications of their structureand habits depending on it, and aspopular knowledge of the subject islikely to be extremely general in itsscope, I have thought it advisable topresent a brief special account of thisphenomenon. The agency of insects in effectingthe cross-pollination of flowers haslong been recognized. Credit is given toSprengel for first publishing accountsof the interesting modifications offlowers due to their interrelation withinsects, and for discovering that theinsects were instrumental in pollinatingthe flowers. (Das entdeckte Geheim-niss der Natur im Bau und in derBefruchtung der Blumen, von Chris-tian Konrad Sprengel, Berlin, 1793).But that this pollination by insects was (nearly) exclusively cross-pollinationhe did not apparently fully understand, or at least he did not fully under-stand the significance of cross-pollination. It was reserved for Darwin(On the Fertilization of Orchids by Insects, London, 1862), on a basis not
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Fig. 760 —Snapdragon being visited byhoney-bees. (From nature.) 564 Insects and Flowers merely of his acquaintance with the observations of Sprengel, Waechter,Delpino, Hooker, and others, but of characteristically keen and carefulinvestigations of his own (particularly on orchids) to reveal the wide diffu-sion and great specialization of this interrelation, and to explain the causalfactors in determining the marvelous phenomena attending its development.These causal factors are (i) the real advantage to the plant species of cross-fertilization, and (2) the action of natural selection in modifying both flowersand insects for the sake, or by reason of, this advantage. Fertilization among plants is like fertilization among animals; a germ-(sperm-) cell from one individual (male or hermaphrodite) fuses with a germ-(egg-) cell from another (female or hermaphrodite) individual or from thesame (hermaphrodite) individual. The sperm-cells are contained in pollenproduced in the anthers of sta

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