298 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



and we cannot suppose they were the only kinds of 

 flowers. Hosts of herbaceous plants less capable of 

 being preserved must have been their compeers. 

 In short, the battle of life was being fought out as 

 keenly and bitterly in that distant epoch as it is 

 now, and perhaps as many individuals, if not as 

 many species of plants, joined in the fray. 



When we fully bear in mind that flowering plants 

 have been subjected to these multitudinous external 

 changes, and that their living tissues are so plastic 

 that they can adapt themselves, unless overstrained, 

 to a large range of variation, the wonder is that 

 modern types retain so much of the character which 

 distinguished them ages ago — that Oaks should still 

 be Oaks, and Maples, Maples, now as they were in 

 pre-Cretaceous times. 



Notwithstanding the numerous evidences of floral 

 change which have already been noticed, the flowering 

 parts of plants are not subjected to such changeable 

 conditions as roots and stems. These have to be 

 adapted to a variety of physical and chemical con- 

 ditions — to dry and moist places, and to soils which 

 may contain this or that chemical element. Hence 

 we cannot wonder that in the same genus of plants 

 the flowers are remarkably alike, differing only in 

 some unimportant features, easily explained, of size 

 and tint of corolla, whilst the leaves run the entire 

 gamut of foliar pattern — as, for instance, is the case 

 with our Buttercups. This remarkable variation is 



