332 THE STRUCTURE OF FLOWERS. 



The difficulty which Mr. Romanes has felt in the struggle 

 for life through the swamping effect of a varying offspring 

 being crossed with the parent form, seems to me to be illusory 

 as far as most flowering plants are concerned.* For not only 

 do the majority of new forms arise through transport of 

 seeds to a new and distant locality, but even at home, if the 

 plant be at all responsive, so many seedlings, perhaps all, 

 will tend to be difiFerentiated at the same time and in the 

 same way, that the parent form will soon be in a minority, 

 and if now neglected by insects may die out through " insect- 

 selection " of the new form. 



According to the old view, that plants are varying spon- 

 taneously in all directions, and that only a few are selected 

 by insects, the difficulty has long been felt that dangers of 

 all sorts must surround the offspring of those few. Let us 

 reverse the process, however, and let the insects themselves 

 be the cause of changes set up in the flowers in the adaptive 

 directions, and the responsive power of the flower itself will 

 soon develop the best forms. These run no risk of being lost, 

 through the multitude of offspring. Hence, if my theory be 

 true, physiological selection, which I cannot find horticul- 

 turists are inclined to accept, is not needed at all. 



Suppose some prevailing insect to have begun to set up 

 incipient changes for a new variety, which then becomes dis- 

 persed ; since many of the offspring will possess the new- 

 adaptation, and several other kinds of insects will visit the 

 flower in different places, as the seeds happen to get trans- 

 ported, the result will be, that while the original species 

 of insect induces the descendants of the plant at home to 

 vary in adaptation to itself, others are at work elsewhere, 



* Fritz Miiller found the genus Abutilon and a species of Bignonia to 

 be more or less sterile with parental pollen. See Miiller's Fertilisation, 

 etc., pp. 145, 466. 



