OBSERVATIONS UPON DOUBLING OF FLOWERS. 377 



feral plants. In other words, the cultivated plant is living an 

 unnatural existence ; stimulated by man's careful attention and 

 guided by his will, it yields to the demands of its guardian. Va- 

 riations quickly arise under such fostering conditions, and such 

 changes as are advantageous to man are, if possible, perpetuated 

 by him. This perpetuity in many instances can only be accom- 

 plished by non-sexual methods, as by cuttings, graftings, etc., and 

 it therefore follows that the seeding process is either ignored or 

 prevailed against. With their energies all turned in some other 

 channel, plants may in time cease to develop seed. 



A flower of the showy sort we may consider as the product of 

 two great forces or groups of forces — namely, that which is within* 

 the plant, and for the lack of a better term may be called the con- 

 structive ability of the plant ; and those forces which act from 

 without, and are included in the general term environment The 

 chief factor in this last or external force is the modifying influ- 

 ence of insects, due primarily to irritation. For example, the lily- 

 flower in its wild state has reached its present condition because 

 the mother plants and their insect attendants have worked to- 

 gether to produce a structure that is admirably adapted to the 

 needs of each. It is, it seems to me, not asking too much of any 

 one who is a disciple of evolution, even in its mildest form, to 

 conceive that the simplest wind-fertilized flowers were the first of 

 all floral structures to appear in the far-away geologic times. In 

 those early ages, provided that we base our reasoning upon what 

 is seen to-day, it is easy to understand that out of the foliar struct- 

 ures there were evolved the primitive ovary and the ante- Adam- 

 ite stamen. That ancient ovary might stand in striking contrast 

 with the simple pistil of a pine-cone or leaf serration of a cycas, 

 and the corresponding stamen was perhaps only a slight modifica- 

 tion of a common leaf. But out of these primitive essential organs 

 came, by slow but by an ever-advancing adaptation to the sur- 

 rounding world, the wonderful combinations of color, odor, and 

 form which we see in the more complex floral structures of the 

 present day. 



All the conspicuous parts of the flower outside of the essential 

 organs are for the purpose of securing a transfer of pollen from 

 the stamen of one flower to the pistil of another. This process of 

 cross-fertilization, as has been abundantly shown, is an advantage 

 to the offspring, which are stronger and therefore better able to 

 cope with surrounding rivals. Therefore, any change in floral 

 structure, however slight, born of accident as some would say, or 

 the result of an inward impulse to improve, is one step toward 

 that ideal condition of perfect adaptation between a plant and its 

 surroundings. So far as the sexual elements are concerned, this 

 ideal adjustment seems to be that of wide separation, and accord- 



YOL. XXXVII. — 28 



