PRACTICAL POLLINATION 251 



season after its production. And it is absolutely 

 incumbent on the plants that grow from this seed 

 to produce in turn an annual crop of seed that 

 will carry on the racial stock. 



So it is not strange that a plant that is thus 

 perennially threatened with destruction should 

 adopt exceptional measures to insure the fertili- 

 zation of its flowers. 



Very often it may have happened that certain 

 individual flowers that chanced to be self-ferti- 

 lized were instrumental in saving the life of a 

 species that otherwise would have been exter- 

 minated. And as, through the operation of 

 heredity, the offspring of these flowers would 

 tend to reproduce the self-fertilizing habit of 

 their parent, the surviving representatives of the 

 species might thus come to constitute a tribe in 

 which the habit of bearing self -fertilized flowers 

 was the prevailing custom. 



And thus it is, perhaps, that the method of 

 reproduction followed by the wheat in our fields 

 and the peas and beans in our gardens may be 

 accounted for. 



Yet the fact that certain of these self- fertilized 

 flowers, as for example the violet, retain the 

 custom of putting forth showy flowers even 

 though these for the most part are seedless, shows 

 how powerful is the hold of remoter heredity, 



