254 TOWARDS THE HUMAN FORM 



forms such as Viburnum and Oleander. And if we cannot 

 add to this list a long series of brilliant flowers, it is because 

 beautiful flowers hardly ever grow on big trees, and because the 

 delicate stalks of shrubs and herbaceous plants which do bear 

 them are ill-adapted to fossilization. 



All this new vegetation naturally had its echo in the graceful 

 and active world of Insects living in its midst. Apart from 

 certain Hemiptera, which stuck a sharp probe into the young 

 branches and sucked their juices, the Primary Period had 

 scarcely known any Insects but those which lived on solid 

 food crushed by their powerful buccal armament. But the 

 new prairies, with their blossoms, and the woodlands with their 

 tender foliage, offered the restless Insects a thousand new 

 occasions for the exercise of their activity. Honeyed drops 

 collected on the leaves, nectar formed within the depths of the 

 corolla of the blossoms. This was dainty and almost ambrosial 

 food for aerial denizens. Cutting mandibles and jaws armed 

 with powerful pincers were of no use for imbibing such exquisite 

 fare, and they had to be elongated, softened, refined, and 

 partially atrophied, transformed into the lamina which support 

 the bee's flexible tongue, the proboscis of the butterfly, or 

 the suction tube of flies. Thus to the clumsy insects of 

 Primary times was added a host of delicate, swift-flying 

 creatures often eclipsing in brilliance the very flowers they 

 plundered. The earth is at last decked in such fairy colours as 

 we admire in the tropics. The time has come when its surface 

 at least teems with living things, and the air is peopled. The 

 conditions of Primary times so eminently favourable for this 

 world of tiny creatures to-day so fragile, continued into 

 Secondary times. Nowhere did the temperature drop 

 sufficiently to destroy at one fell blow all the Insects of any 

 particular region. Like the higher organisms they died one 

 by one, and the duration of their lives was cut short only by 

 accidents. This full span of life permitted them to observe, to 

 acquire experience, and to profit by what they had learned. 

 One generation overlapped another. Parents lived to see and 

 know their progeny, could live among them, care for them, and 

 feed them as long as they were unable to feed themselves ; 

 or, at least, place them in such conditions as would provide 

 them with the means of subsistence close at hand until they 

 were old enough to go farther afield and seek it for themselves. 



