336 LUTHER BURBANK 



visited by the ancestors of the moth, but were not 

 dependent on them for any very complicated 

 method of pollination. Then successive ages in 

 which the moth gradually developed its special 

 pair of pollen-gathering jaws, while the plant 

 correspondingly shortened its pistil and became 

 more and more dependent upon the peculiar 

 process of fertilization to which the moth was 

 becoming adapted. 



To anyone who has not thought long and 

 carefully, with the examination of many exam- 

 ples, along the lines of the evolution of organic 

 forms through natural selection, as explained by 

 Darwin, all this will probably seem rather vague 

 and unsatisfactory. And, indeed, it must be ad- 

 mitted that among all the extraordinary cases of 

 adaptation through which insects and plants have 

 come to be mutually helpful, this is at least as 

 difficult to understand as any other. 



The seeming intelligence of the act of gather- 

 ing and depositing the ball of pollen is empha- 

 sized by the fact that this pollen is never of direct 

 use to the progeny of the moth, yet is vitally im- 

 portant to them indirectly because it fertilizes the 

 seed embryos of the plant that are to serve them 

 as food. At first glance, then, one can scarcely 

 escape the thought that the moth must have had 

 some such comprehension of the plant's needs as 



