HAVE PLANTS A PEDIGREE? 



39 



the varying insect, or die out. And we have no right to assume that 

 the body of an insect is a fixed bulk or structure any more than that 

 the " instinct " or intelligence is fixed and invariable. Prof. Riley lias 

 shown the extreme probability that the peculiar modification of the 

 palpus of the female yuccasella, which makes her the marriage-priest- 

 ess of the yucca, was brought about little by little, as the peculiar 

 structure of the flower came little by little. Flowers must vary with 

 insects, and insects with flowers — yucca with yuccasella, and yucca- 

 sella with yucca — or both must die. 



We have now the rationale of colors and odors. As vitality seems 

 to have some general relation to color, perhaps the first show of color 

 in a floral envelope was due to a slight diminution of vital force.^ 

 Color being advantageous to the plant by attracting insects, when 

 once it appeared its shades would be multiplied and intensified, age 

 after age, by natural selection. And as color is developed little by 

 little as the result of insect-vision, modifications of structure are de- 

 veloped, in equal pace, by insect-touch.^ 



This is not all. An organism is modified by all which environs 

 it. Mr. Spencer, in his great work on " Biology," has shown us that 

 the form of the cell, the leaf, the branch, the trunk, the flower, is de- 

 termined in great part by the environment. Varying amounts of 

 sunshine or shade modify the form of a branch. A prevailing wind 

 modifies the form of a tree. A change of position on the stem changes 

 the form of a flower. The drooping gloxinia in your conservatory is 

 bi-symmetrical, 2Lnd has a rudimental fifth stamen. Culture brings the 

 flower up, erect on the stem, makes it radically symmetrical, restores 

 the rudiment to a perfect stamen, prunes the flower of its eccentrici- 

 ties, and makes it regidar — just as it does with a man. 



Nature is, in the plant, what her name implies, " natural'' a some- 

 thing about to be, a continual becoming. We see what changes are 

 going on in the garden. Changes the same in kind are going on in 

 the fields and the woods. A stroll over Goat Island on any May day 

 will show the observant eye how variable in size and color and even in 

 structure is the Trillium grandiflorum. The white-weed which over- 

 runs our Eastern meadows has sported into a score of incipient varie- 



^ White is excess of color, and every florist knows that a plant with white flowers has 

 pale leaves and stem, as if the entire plant were in sympathy with the petals, and were 

 lacking in vitality. 



2 A recent writer has said that, if chance were the ruler of the world, it would not be 

 the highest ruler, as the law oi" chances is higher than chance itself. If the coloring of 

 flowers, he would say, were even a thing of chance, still, by this law, the blending of 

 colors and their juxtaposition, in the main, would show some kind of order. But we can 

 account for the prevalence of pleasing colors and odors without falling back on the law 

 of chances. Very low down in organic Nature is the sense of beauty. A bright color is 

 bright to the eye of a bee as well as to our own. In the course of time those odors and 

 that display of color most pleasing to the senses would, by natural selection, become 

 prevalent and hereditary. 



