22 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



II. 



SOME ECONOMICS OF NATURE. 



AMONG the views of living Nature, and indeed of the inorganic uni- 

 verse as well, which receive tacit acceptance and sanction from ordi- 

 nary thinkers, there are certain phases deemed incontrovertible in 

 their plain, every-day demonstration. Before our eyes, for instance, 

 we see Madre Natura spending her wherewithal in apparent thrift- 

 lessness and woeful waste. The proverb, " Waste not, want not," so 

 thoroughly and repeatedly dinned into youthful ears, would seem to 

 have no application to the works and ways of the prodigal All-mother 

 that surrounds and encompasses us. The flower that "blooms unseen 

 and wastes its sweetness on the desert air," is a very mild illustration 

 of a nature-spirit which appeals in more forcible ways to the mind as 

 an example of needless contrivance, wasted effort, and useless prodi- 

 gality. We fly to Tennyson for that apt quotation concerning the 

 fifty seeds produced, and whereof only one comes to the full fruition 

 of its race. Every summer day shows us how true apparently the 

 poetic axiom holds. Every spring-time seems to teach us the same 

 truism. The pines and other cone-bearing trees discharge their pollen 

 or fertilising matter in clouds. The winds, as Nature intends, sweep 

 this pollen from their branches, on the " flowers " of which it has been 

 produced. Carried through the air for miles, so much of the pollen- 

 cloud will fall on the receptive " cones," fertilise the ovules, and thus 

 convert them into seeds, whence a new dynasty of trees may arise. 

 But countless showers of pollen are spent in vain, irrecoverably lost, 

 and sent abroad to no purpose whatever. They fall on barren 

 ground ; they litter the earth miles away from their parent trees, or 

 cover the surface of lakes for miles with a yellow film their purpose 

 futile and their production vain. True it is, as the botanist will tell us, 

 that more pollen must be produced in the case of wind-fertilised 

 plants than is found in that of insect-impregnated flowers. It is a 

 case of " hit or miss " with the wind-fertilised trees, while it is an 

 illustration of an exact calculated aim with the flowers. Hence 

 Nature has to provide for the contingency which awaits her efforts in 

 the former instance by providing a very copious supply of pollen. 

 She is in the position here, not of the marksman who takes deliberate 

 aim at the bull's-eye with his rifle and single bullet. Contrariwise,, 

 she uses, her Gatling gun or her mitrailleuse in the act of fertilising 

 the trees. She showers her bullets at the object in the hope that 



