MICROSCOPICAL COLLECTIONS IN FLORIDA. 143 



simple plain leaves of common herbs. It must have early com- 

 menced in some way to appropriate insect food on these leaves, 

 because every subsequent change was for the betterment of the 

 plant in this direction. The stem of the leaves soon began to 

 put out flanges or wings on each side, the phyllodia of the botan- 

 ists, which are not uncommon among plants. And these out- 

 spread wings must have assisted in the absorption of insect food 

 that was washed down upon them. Then the edges of the wings 

 turned up, and curved around towards each other, until finally 

 they met and grew together, forming a tube and a much more 

 complete receptacle for decomposing animal bodies. A South 

 American genus, the Heliamphora, is just in this partly develop- 

 ed condition at the present time. Then from some unknown 

 cause and in a way exceedingly difficult to explain, our Sarra- 

 cenia commenced preparations for an entirely different manner 

 of capturing insects. The leaf bent over the orifice of the tube, 

 forming the hood, and those remarkable spines and tiled plates 

 were developed on the inside of the hood and tube, growing 

 backwards, contrary to the order of nature. When all this was 

 accomplished and fully completed, but not before, our plant could 

 commence its career as the most successful trappist of either the 

 vegetable or the animal kingdom. 



Now according to the Darwinian theory, all these transform- 

 ations were the result of innumerable slight and favorable vari- 

 ations, each one of which happened to be so beneficial to the 

 particular plant concerned, that it got the start of all the others, 

 and every time run them all out of existence. One cannot tell 

 how many million times this extinction and reproduction must 

 have occurred, before our marvellously perfect little fly-trap was 

 finally produced. Excuse me if I confess that not all the canon- 

 ical books of Darwin are sufficient to make me put faith in the 

 miracles attributed to natural selection and the survival of the 

 fittest. I believe in the fact of the progressive development of 

 the organic kingdom ; for all science teaches it. But I believe 

 it was governed and guided by forces more potent than chance 

 variation and adaptive selection. The Being, or the First Cause 

 if you will, who originated the simple elements of matter, and 



