Its descendants would probably inherit a tendency to a
similar slight deviation of structure. The tubes of the corollas of
the common red and incarnate clovers (Trifolium pratense and
incarnatum) do not on a hasty glance appear to differ in length; yet
the hive-bee can easily suck the nectar out of the incarnate clover,
but not out of the common red clover, which is visited by humble-bees
alone; so that whole fields of the red clover offer in vain an
abundant supply of precious nectar to the hive-bee. Thus it might be a
great advantage to the hive-bee to have a slightly longer or
differently constructed proboscis. On the other hand, I have found by
experiment that the fertility of clover greatly depends on bees
visiting and moving parts of the corolla, so as to push the pollen on
to the stigmatic surface. Hence, again, if humble-bees were to become
rare in any country, it might be a great advantage to the red clover
to have a shorter or more deeply divided tube to its corolla, so that
the hive-bee could visit its flowers. Thus I can understand how a
flower and a bee might slowly become, either simultaneously or one
after the other, modified and adapted in the most perfect manner to
each other, by the continued preservation of individuals presenting
mutual and slightly favourable deviations of structure.
I am well aware that this doctrine of natural selection, exemplified
in the above imaginary instances, is open to the same objections which
were at first urged against Sir Charles Lyell's noble views on "the
modern changes of the earth, as illustrative of geology;" but we now
very seldom hear the action, for instance, of the coast-waves, called
a trifling and insignificant cause, when applied to the excavation of
gigantic valleys or to the formation of the longest lines of inland
cliffs.
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