ON ADAPTATION 
“Just as a mother cat can make a dumb appeal 
for the protection or the sustenance of her kittens, 
an appeal no human being can misunderstand, 
just as strongly and just as clearly do the 
snowballs, by the beauty and helplessness of their 
self-sterilized flowers, appeal to us to see to their 
protection and effect the perpetuation of their 
kind.” 
Many violets, as they grow wild in the woods, 
bear two kinds of blossoms. 
One is the flower, rich in color and in scent. 
which is borne at the top of the plant. 
The other, an egg nest without odor, or beauty, 
or other advertisement—which is borne near the 
base of the plant. 
The flower at the top, like the flower of a 
geranium, advertises to the insects to bring pollen 
from other plants. 
The colorless flower at the bottom needs no 
insect to bring it pollen—it pollenates itself and 
produces fertile eggs with only a single strain of 
heredity. 
Some of these violets with upper and lower 
blossoms, particularly those which grow in the 
shade, never open their upper flowers—as if 
knowing that the friendly insects so prefer the sun 
that no attempt at advertisement could lure them 
[113] 
