168 NATURAL SCIENCE (September 
checked by natural selection.” Secondly, the following are Darwin’s 
words with reference to the inheritance of characters which are no 
longer useful:—‘“ No doubt the definite action of changed con- 
ditions . . . have all produced an effect, probably a great effect, 
independently of any advantage thus gained. . . . I fully admit that 
many structures are now of no direct use to their possessors, and 
may never have been of any use to their progenitors.” . .. He 
mentions the webbed feet of upland geese, etc. . . . “ With these 
important exceptions, we may conclude that the structure of every 
living creature either now is, or was formerly, of some direct or 
indirect use to its possessor,’+ He would thus include all rudi- 
mentary organs as having been formerly useful, but now useless; of 
these he remarks that rudimentary organs from being useless are not 
regulated by natural selection, and hence are variable. If they be 
so in the animal kingdom, they are not so in the vegetable; e.g., the 
staminodes and rudiments of ovaries of flowers are constant in form 
to each species, genus or order which is characterised by them, 
respectively ; as, e.g., Hrodiwm, Samolus, Mercurialis, Parietaria, 
Valerianeae, Myrsineae, ete., and are recognised as permanent 
diagnostic characters. 
Injurious Characters.—In many flowers there have been 
acquired and retained by heredity, what may be called by Darwin’s 
term “ disservice,” or even “injurious” characters. For if, eg., the 
use of flowers be to set good seed, then anything which tends to 
hinder that process is obviously injurious. Such occurs in the 
structure of the flowers of most orchids, and in many adaptations 
to insect fertilisation, as dichogamy, protandry, polymorphism, ete., 
whenever they tend to bar self-fertilisation. 
For it need hardly be observed now, that Darwin’s assumption 
from the numerous adaptations in flowers for intercrossing by 
insects, that self-fertilisation was “injurious,” was based on a quite 
erroneous deduction altogether. The fact being that in nature 
autogamous, or self-fertilised plants, are by far the most prolific, 
perfectly healthy, most abundant in individuals, and most widely 
dispersed. 
On the other hand, all special adaptations to secure self- 
fertilisation are obviously useful, are quite as numerous and 
excellent in the adjustment of the organs, as are those for inter- 
crossing.? 
Now it is worth while observing that the result of such injurious 
1“ Origin, etc.,” p. 160. 
2 The reader is referred (should he require it) to the writer’s papers on ‘‘Self- 
fertilisation,” Zrans. Linn. Soc., 1877 ; Review of Darwin’s ‘‘ Cross and Self-fertilisa- 
tion of Flowers” in ‘‘Gardener’s Chronicle” (1877); and ‘‘The Origin of Plant 
Structures.” 
* See Kerner & Oliver’s ‘‘ Natural History of Plants ;” ‘‘ Autogamy,” vol. ii., 
p. 331, ff. 
