Origin of Species Variorum

that these are .. visited by many hive-bees. I do not know whether this statement is accurate; nor whether another published statement can be trusted, namely, that the Ligurian bee, which is generally considered a mere variety and which freely crosses with the common hive-bee, is able to reach and suck the nectar of the common red clover. Thus, in a country where this kind of clover abounded, it might be a great advantage to the hive-bee to have a slightly longer or differently constructed proboscis. On the other hand, as the fertility of this clover absolutely depends on bees visiting the flowers, if humble-bees were to become rare in any country, it might be a great advantage to the plant to have a shorter or more deeply divided corolla, so that the hive-bees should be induced to suck 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 ... to each other in the most perfect manner, by the continued preservation of all the individuals which presented slight deviations of structure mutually favourable to each other.

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 .. seldom hear the agencies still at work, spoken of as trifling or insignificant, when applied to the excavation of the deepest valleys or to the formation of long lines of inland cliffs. Natural selection .. acts only by the preservation and accumulation of .. small inherited modifications, each profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a