86 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 



nurses, luck and chance, it follows that an enor- 

 mous proportion of the offspring will die. 



By investigating the blossoms of the oak, horse- 

 chestnut, and maple, we see that these trees, ages 

 ago, bore very many seeds, which must have re- 

 ceived but a scant provision apiece wherewith to 

 start themselves in life. Under these circumstances, 

 the majority of the seedlings would die young, giv- 

 ing the parent-plant the expense of putting an 

 enormous family out into the world, and all to lit- 

 tle purpose. To-day, evolution is teaching them 

 " a more excellent way. " 



"It is a fatal habit," says Grant Allen, "to 

 picture evolution to one's self as a closed chapter. 

 We should think of it rather as a chapter that 

 goes on writing itself for ever. Our fields are full 

 of degenerate flowers which retain some memorial 

 of their old estate, pointing backward, like the 

 fasces of the Byzantine emperors, to the past 

 glories of their race in earlier times." They are 

 also full of plants which bear somewhere about 

 them half-obliterated traces which tell the story of 

 their progress from a lower to a higher form of 

 life. 



