1 82 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



vening sea or valley to so many distinct and separate 

 chilly regions ? 



One obvious answer might be, that under similar 

 conditions a like flower had everywhere been de- 

 veloped from some common plant of lowland or 

 temperate districts. But in reality such absolute 

 similarity of independent development never actually 

 occurs in nature, for the various Lloydias are not 

 merely rather like one another, but are actually one 

 and the same species, as like each other (to quote our 

 old Welsh friend Fluellin) 'as my fingers is to my 

 fingers.' Now, naturalists know that such absolute 

 identity of structure can only arise through unbroken 

 descent from a common origin ; wherever two species 

 are separately descended from unlike ancestors, how- 

 ever close their analogies may be, they are always at 

 once marked off from one another by some ver>' 

 obvious points of structural dissimilarity. Nor can 

 we suppose that the seeds of the Lloydia have been 

 transported from one place to another b)' mere 

 accident, clinging to the legs of Arctic birds, or 

 carried unwittingly on the muddy heels of globe- 

 trotting tourists. Such accidents do indeed occa- 

 sionally occur, and they account for the very frag- 

 mentary manner in which remote Oceanic islands like 

 the Azores or St. Helena are peopled by waifs and 



