32 THE LIFE OF THE PLANT 



they arose perfectly formed ; they were created in the 

 same perfect form as we see them now. Only those 

 who are convinced of the fact that organic beings are 

 by nature capable of transformation, that they developed 

 the one from the other, becoming more complicated or 

 more simple as the case may be, but always improving, 

 only those can raise the question as to how organic 

 forms have developed and why they are so well adapted 

 to their functions and environment. I will do my best 

 in my final lecture to investigate the answers that 

 science at its present stage of development is able to 

 give to these questions ; nevertheless I should be sorry 

 to miss this opportune occasion for demonstrating the 

 superiority of the modern theory, if not conclusively, 

 at least so far as to show how facts, otherwise incompre- 

 hensible, are thereby elucidated. 



In choosing and comparing certain striking examples 

 I have tried to explain the cycle of the life-history of the 

 plant from the point of view of the theory of meta- 

 morphosis. Let us consider some of the facts above 

 stated. If plants were created in final, perfectly 

 definite forms, what purpose is to be attributed to all the 

 transitional organs, such as petals and non-petals, 

 stamens and non-stamens (as in the water-lily), or to 

 those appendages at the top of the sepals of the peony ? 

 Taken independently these transitional organs are 

 quite useless, since they fulfil neither the purpose of the 

 organ from which they have developed, nor of the organ 

 into which they are about to change (this is why they 

 have survived only in a few exceptional cases). They 

 are utterly incomprehensible from the point of view of 

 individual acts of creation. But they will acquire a 

 very definite meaning as soon as we admit the other 

 explanation, as soon as we accept the theory that all 

 the numberless organic forms in Nature have not been 

 created finally nor in isolation, but have gradually 

 developed the one from the other, becoming more or 



