The number of humble-bees [sic] in any district depends in a great measure upon the number of field mice, which destroy their combs and nests?Now the number of mice is largely dependent, as everyone knows, on the number of cats; and Col. Newman says, ?Near the villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice.?
Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!
This only-occasionally celebrated passage from Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species is highlighted in Robert Frenay’s new book, Pulse.