A LIVING MYSTERY. 



737 



to upset the dormant condition — allows the failing growth to 

 continue. The seed swells, the fruit ripens, and a new plant is 

 shed forth upon the earth, the product of two distinct prior indi- 

 viduals. 



But if the embryo is not thus quickened, growth in it ceases 

 altogether. The seed shrivels up, the pod does not swell, and no 

 new plant is produced at all. It does not contain within itself the 

 needful energy for further development. Supposing all the flow- 

 ers on a pea-plant were thus to fail — supposing no pollen were 

 ever to be carried from blossom to blossom — then that particular 

 plant would wither and die out altogether, leaving no offspring at 

 all behind to represent it. 



In the case we have supposed, however, the flower did get fer- 

 tilized, and the pea before me — a dormant but still a living plant 

 — is the irrefragable proof that it actually did so. Now, in some 

 instances, perhaps in this one, a flower gets fertilized with its own 

 pollen. In such cases, as a rule, the fruit nevertheless swells out 

 properly and the seed produces a young plant. How, then, are 

 we to reconcile this apparent discrepancy with the general princi- 

 ples of sexual growth laid down above ? Well, we must recollect 

 that in a certain sense each leaf is a distinct individual. Again, 

 from the biological point of view the flower consists of modified 

 leaves, some of them specialized to do duty as sepals, some as pet- 

 als, some as stamens, and some as ovaries. Each of these is there- 

 fore in some sense an individual. In the entire community or 

 compound organism, in other words, we may regard the stamens 

 and ovaries as particular members, told off, like the queen-bees 

 and drones in the hive, to fulfill the part of fathers and mothers, 

 while the true leaves, like the workers, provide the food or mate- 

 rial for growth. Thus, even in the same flower the stamens and 

 ovaries are properly to be regarded as distinct individuals, capable 

 of producing healthy offspring with one another, like the queen- 

 bees and drones of the same hive. 



Nature, however, does not stop here. The fundamental fact at 

 the bottom of all fertilization whatsoever seems to be this, that 

 where individual formative power fails it can be supplemented 

 and set on foot again by an access of fresh formative power from 

 without. Union is strength : what one can not do, two can. But 

 the fresh fillip seems to be most distinctly felt when it comes not 

 from another member of the same original colony — that is to say, 

 from a stamen of the same blossom or of another blossom on the 

 same plant — but from a totally distinct and separate colony, or, in 

 other words and in more familiar language, from the flower on 

 another neighboring plant. Where the parents are too closely re- 

 lated, it would seem, both are apt to have the same weak points, 

 which therefore reappear in the offspring and vitiate it. But 



TOL. XXXIII. 4*7 



