THE " INTELLIGENCE " OF PLANTS 91 



Speaking of the wonderful mechanism for cross-fertilisation in 

 the case of the Orchid Coryanthes macrantha, he tells us : 



Here, then, we have a flower that knows and plays upon the passions 

 of insects. Nor can it be pretended that all these are only so much more 

 or less romantic interpretations ; no, the facts have been precisely and 

 scientifically observed and it is impossible to explain the use and arrange- 

 ment of the flowers' different organs in any other way. We must accept 

 the evidence as it stands. This incredible and efficaceous artifice is the 

 more astonishing inasmuch as it does not here tend to satisfy the 

 immediate and urgent need to eat that sharpens the dullest wits ; it has 

 only a distant ideal in view ; the propagation of the species. But, why, we 

 shall be asked, these fantastic complications which end only by increasing 

 the dangers of chance ? Let us not hasten to give judgment and answer. 

 We know nothing of the reasons of the plants. Do we know the obstacles 

 the flowers encounter in the direction of logic and simplicity. Do we 

 know thoroughly a single one of the organic laws of its existence and its 

 growth ? 



As I have said before, I do not think that the glory of the 

 romance involved in the mutual relations between plant and 

 animal, is in any way lessened by the discovery that the plant 

 in no way lives by itself or to itself, and that the great majority 

 of its wonderful contrivances are " designed " to effect a bio- 

 economic utility whilst subserving at the same time the more 

 self-regarding purposes of Nutrition and Reproduction. 



Maeterlinck commits himself to the following statement : 



The flowers came on our earth before the insects ; they had, therefore, 

 when the latter appeared, to adapt a totally new system of machinery 

 to the habits of these unexpected collaborators. This geologically incon- 

 testable fact alone, amid all that which we do not know, is enough to 

 establish evolution ; and does not this somewhat vague word mean, after 

 all, adaptation, modification, intelligent progress ? It would be easy, 

 moreover, without appealing to pre-historic events, to bring together a 

 great number of facts which would show that the faculty of adaptation 

 and intelligent progress is not reserved exclusively for the human race. 



I have already pointed out that the plants were not so 

 unprepared as Maeterlinck imagines, and that above all, they 

 were, in virtue of their past, equipped with a strong symbiotic 

 sense, which is vastly more important than any other inheritance 

 that can be suggested from geological data. The plant's proto- 

 plasm was already used to biological co-operation, or 

 " collaboration," as Maeterlinck has it, and it merely developed 

 steadily if gradually along the path of increased collaboration. 

 The plants merely learnt to extend the range and efficacy of 



