The American Horticulturist says that "Prof. Shelton, of the Kansas Agricultural College, remarked some time since, that in ' Kansas bumble bees are almost unknown. It is safe to say that not one clover head in a dozen ever knows the embrace of the bumble bees; and yet we believe that nowhere are such crops of clover seed grown as in this State. Here every clover head which is allowed to come to maturity is every year filled with seed of the best quality. Certainly our clover worries along very handsomely without bumble bees.'"

This accords with the experience of Mr. Meehan, who, at the time when Mr. Darwin attempted to show that clover could not seed without humble bees, pointed out that in America, humble bees did not enter by the fertilizing door, but slit the tube of the clover flower near its base, and carried off the honey without meddling with the anthers at all. They rather assisted by jarring the flowers, in scattering the flower's own pollen within the corolla, and hence favored self-fertilization rather than crossing with others.