52 PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION 



Flowers What I have said applies equally to the question of the origin 

 Lamarck ^ fl wers - Here, as with fruits, exercise is out of the question, 

 ism and how can external conditions shape and colour a blossom ? 

 It might have been thought, therefore, that the flower world 

 would have been allowed to be a stronghold of Weismann 

 and his followers and would have been left unattacked by the 

 boldest of Lamarckians. But a distinguished botanist has been 

 bold enough to advance to the attack, and metaphorically it 

 may be said that his bones lie bleaching in front of the walls. 

 Dropping metaphor, we may say that he has supplied an ex- 

 cellent rednctlo ad absurdum of the Lamarckian theory. His view 

 is that flowers have been produced by insects. Protoplasm is 

 irritable and grows when stimulus is applied. Insects crawling 

 over flowers, or the first rudimentary beginnings of them, 

 have caused them to assume the forms which they have at 

 present. 



This is the theory. But how is it possible that the beautiful 

 shapes of flowers can be due to the clumsy scrambling of bees in 

 search of honey? Did so bungling an artist ever turn out so 

 finished a work ? No doubt the bee is clever enough in attain- 

 ing his own ends. But watch him at work and see if he could 

 possibly shape the lip of a corolla. Moreover, besides bees and 

 other welcome insects, flowers have most unwelcome creeping 

 visitors such as ants, and their assaults are guarded against by 

 chevaux defrise of hairs, or else the blossom is a hanging bell so 

 that the small crawling vermin cannot get into it. Both classes 

 of visitors, the welcome and the unwelcome, must equally stimu- 

 late the protoplasm by the pressure of their feet and bodies. 

 Why is the result so different in the two cases ? Why does the 

 flower invite the visits of the one class and bar the way against 

 the other ? I am assuming that the flowers require cross- 

 fertilisation and, therefore, welcome those jnsects that are likely 

 to carry the pollen. But even if this assumption is not made, 

 the argument will hold. 



Some flowers have a gay outer rim in which there is no honey, 

 designed to attract insects, while the honey-bearing and fertile 

 flowers in the centre are less showy. This is the case with 



