Dear M^r. Darwin

I have read with some interest the several paragraphs (including your own) touching the scarcity of holly berries this season,—a fact we have most of us noticed.¹ But, in regard to the reason. In the spring I frequently collect the attention of persons to the great paucity of the common humble bee; and I gather that to this you mainly attribute the lack of berries, for I do not know that the common hive bee appeared in fewer numbers than usual.² Now I want to ask you whether your observation has led you to notice that the humble bee rarely goes to the flowers of the holly, for I do not recollect ever seeing one amongst them,—when the hive bee abounds on them. Should this be so, the scarcity of berries would hardly be explained on that hypothesis. The deficiency of humble bees last spring was very noticeable, and at present inexplicable, for the winter generally was not mild, and I think people are quite mistaken in supposing that a mild winter conduces to the preservation of hybernating insects,— I believe it to quite the contrary,—the more severe the winter the better they survive,—and I attribute it to this, that in such an unusually mild winter as the present insects (wasps &cc) do not remain perfectly dormant, and so their natural functions not being in suspension they starve from hunger not from cold. Is it so? I am quite aware that in the case of birds which perish in winter it is