Pollen is the vital agent in the reproduction of all fruit crops, and also the life-cell in the reproduction and perpetuation of all phaneroamic plants, _i.e.,_ plants having conspicuous flowers, has already been shown. In this division of the vegetable kingdom it has been pointed out that reproduction is the result of a union between ovules and pollen grains, the former being the cells of matter, and the latter the life-cells. The methods or agents employed by Nature to bring about this union in plant-life are various. In nearly all of them, excepting that of the union that is produced by insects, it is extremely haphazard. Indeed, the union that is brought about by other insects than bees is almost as fluctuating as that of other agencies, such as wind, &c., if we except the bee family, and this family must be gradually narrowed down to the hive bee as the one _pure errellence_ in the art of fertilisation in the production of crops that are useful for food or otherwise to man. In the majority of entomophilous plants it is almost impossible for fructification to take place but by contact with an outside agent, and the only agents designed by Nature by their construction, instinet, and their domestic requirements, are members of the bee family. In all parts of the world there are many thousands of species and varieties of insects. Yet out of this vast army of unique and, in some instances, grotesque forms, having peculiarities adaptable for the life they have to lead, and for obscuring themselves from enemies by resembling the plants, etc., upon which they live, the only ones that collect and store pollen are bees. When other insects carry pollen it is entirely accidental. Bees cannot live without it. It is their bread of life. Their young cannot be nursed to maturity so as to perform the active duties they have to follow without it. In the insect world there are artisans in paper-making, in spinning, in weaving, in basket-making, in house-building, in masonry, in sawing, in carpentry, in upholstering, \(e\)., each of them having tools or instruments specially suited for carrying out the work Nature has intended them to perform; but the only ones having instruments and appliances for gathering, carrying and storing pollen are bees. Pollen is removed from the anthers and conveyed to the receptive organs of flowers by every variety of insect that alights on them during the time the pollen is distributive. Ily reason of the viscid nature of the pollen grains of most entomophilous flowers it adheres to the body or legs of any insect that may by chance walk over it, and is conveyed by them elsewhere. If it were brought in contact with the pistil of a flower of its own variety, the act of fertilisation would be as efficacious as if it were carried by bees; but these cases are purely accidental, and the success at only "few and far between." Not so with the bee. Every movement of the bee in the direction of fertilisation is a studied one designed purely by Nature to accomplish the perpetuation of the plant it is at work upon. The anthers of some flowers are so situated as to discharge the pollen only on some very particular spot of the external anatomy of the bee--her head, upper surface of the thorax, chest, tongue-sheath, etc., and the stigma is so placed in the flower that only that portion of the bee that has received the pollen would be capable to effect the purpose.