334 DAKWINIANISM. 



Ophrys, which has flowers " representing the figure of a 

 naked man," but whether in that case to attract or repel 

 must surely remain a mystery ! May not this naked 

 man, in fact, actually put to flight these gnats, flies, 

 bees, and other insects, with all that depends on them ? 



There is a remarkable tendency on the part of plants 

 quite generally, according to Erasmus, to organise defence 

 for themselves. The upper side of the leaf, for instance, 

 is the organ of respiration for plants, and, accordingly, 

 necessitates much ingenuity on their part to secure it 

 from injury. It is by a sort of waxy varnish, which is 

 quite impervious to wet, that the pollen is, so to speak, 

 tarpaulined into safety from it ; and it is by the same 

 contrivance that leaves like those of the cabbage oppose 

 to the rain and the dew impregnable upper surfaces. 

 There are other plants, it seems, which, against wet 

 weather and at night, fairly close their leaves; while 

 others, again, content themselves by turning down, 

 simply to let the water run off. Dr. Erasmus is at 

 pains categorically to assert that such movements of 

 reason (at least in the ultimate for us, too), " cannot be 

 explained from mere mechanism ; " and he directly asks, 

 in lieu of being " a merely mechanical effect," does not 

 this fact indicate " a vegetable storge " ? 



Similar curiosities of animal life come also to be 

 occasionally mentioned by Dr. Erasmus, as the formidable 

 tusks of the boar, which is not naturally a carnivorous 

 animal, or the enormous honey-routing proboscis, some- 

 times three inches in length, which the Sphinx 

 convolvula carries rolled up in concentric circles under 

 its chin; or the wingless female Lampyris, which is 

 consequently unable to fly, but which calls her winged 

 husband to her side by illuminating her body, and 

 in this way, as it were, showing him a light. 



Had it been all true that Aristotle, Pliny, and many 



