SOME ECONOMICS OF NATURE. 667 



poetic axiom holds. Every spring-time seems to teach us the same 

 truism. The pines and other cone-bearing trees discharge their pollen 

 or fertilizing matter in clouds. The winds, as Nature intends, sweep 

 this pollen from their branches, on the " flowers " of which it has been 

 produced. Carried through the air for miles, so much of the pollen- 

 cloud will fall on the receptive " cones," fertilize the ovules, and thus 

 convert them into seeds, whence a new dynasty of trees may arise. 

 But countless showers of pollen are spent in vain, irrecoverably lost, 

 and sent abroad to no purpose whatever. They fall on barren ground ; 

 they litter the earth miles away from their parent trees, or cover the 

 surface of lakes for miles with a yellow film their purpose futile and 

 their production vain. True it is, as the botanist will tell us, that more 

 pollen must be produced in the case of wind-fertilized plants than is 

 found in that of insect-impregnated flowers. It is a case of " hit or 

 miss " with the wind-fertilized trees, while it is an illustration of an 

 exact calculated aim with the flowers. Hence Nature has to provide 

 for the contingency which awaits her efforts in the former instance by 

 providing a very copious supply of pollen. She is in the position here, 

 not of the marksman who takes deliberate aim at the bull's-eye with 

 his rifle and single bullet. Contrariwise, she uses her Gatling gun or 

 her mitrailleuse in the act of fertilizing the trees. She showers her 

 bullets at the object in the hope that some of them will hit, and with 

 the equally plain expectation that many must miss altogether. The 

 whole process appears to be wasteful in the extreme, natural affairs 

 notwithstanding, and the Tennysonian couplet is practically realized 

 when the spectacle of tons of wasted pollen is beheld, discharged as 

 these are at the mercy of any wind that blows, and sent into the air 

 to accomplish hap-hazard what in other plants is often effected by de- 

 liberate and carefully calculated mechanism. 



The notion that Nature possesses any system of economics at all 

 might well be questioned by the observer who discerns the apparent 

 waste through which many natural works and ways are carried out. 

 But here, as in the case of so many other phases of life, the two sides 

 of the medal must be carefully studied. It is not the case that Nature 

 is uniformly neglectful of her resources, any more than it is correct 

 to say that she is always saving or perennially economical. Circum- 

 stances alter cases in the phases of natural things as in human affairs, 

 and we may readily enough discover that in several instances a very 

 high degree of well-calculated prudence and foresight, speaking in 

 ordinary terms, is exercised in the regulation of the universe of living 

 and non-living things alike. 



Take, as a broad example of the close adjustment of ways and 

 means to appointed ends, the relationship between animals and green 

 plants in the matter of their gaseous food. That the animal form de- 

 mands for its due sustenance a supply of oxygen gas is, of course, 

 a primary fact of elementary science. Without oxygen, animal life 



