Mr. Darwin, in a letter to the Gardeners' Chronicle, expresses
his belief that the proximate reason why there is so little holly- berry this year is the same as the proximate reason why there is so little seed of the red clover,—and this is, that bees wer extraordinarily rare in the early spring, and that without bee to carry the pollen from the male to the female plant, neither holly nor clover can be fertilised. Why bees were so rare in the spring of last year Mr. Darwin has no notion, but whatever may have caused the comparative inactivity of the bees, that also caused the deficiency of clover-seed and holly-berry. Probably the comparative inactivity of the bees was due to Conservative reaction. They were, perhaps, exchanging their Queen for an Empress, or altering the labour laws to suit the drones, or honey-combing the hives under some impulse of sanitary panic, and so the clover and the holly-flowers got sadly neglected.
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