MALADIE ET SYMBIOSE 287 



seeds, and when we consider the manifold power of contrivance, 

 in Darwin's words : "their prodigality of resources," they being 

 " more highly endowed in their mechanism for cross-fertilisation, 

 than are most other plants " we can only conclude that there 

 exists amongst orchids a lack of really wide bio-economic 

 usefulness of life. 



Neither can Darwin's own attempt at explaining the dis- 

 crepancy in the least deter us from taking this bio-economic view 

 of the matter. He says : 



Profuse expenditure is nothing unusual under nature, as we see with 

 the pollen of wind-fertilised plants, and in the multitude of seeds and 

 seedlings produced by most plants in comparison with the few that reach 

 maturity. In other cases the paucity of the flowers that are impregnated 

 may be due to the proper insects having become rare under the incessant 

 changes to which the world is subject ; or to other plants which are more 

 highly attractive to the proper insects having increased in numbers. 



But we have learnt that such profuse expenditure, at least in 

 the case of certain wind-fertilised weeds, is apt to convey disease 

 to animals and men, and we shall not be far wrong in concluding 

 that the profuse expenditure is in itself pathological. 



Again, the rarity of " proper " insects will, no doubt, in most 

 cases be due to failure of bio-economic service on the part of the 

 plant, the more attractive plants being precisely those which have 

 remained faithful on the path of Symbiogenesis instead of 

 drifting, as the neglected species have done, into Pathogenesis. 

 We have no further use, therefore, for the term " favoured in 

 some other way," and for all similar " Selection " jargon, which 

 has too long called away the attention from the most vital lessons 

 to be gleaned from the study of evolution. 



In bidding good-bye to the subject of Symbiosis and Disease, 

 I have only one more word to add : some of my critics have 

 gravely taken me to task for seeing morality in Nature. When 

 I say that a plant's behaviour is (biologically speaking) " bad," 

 I do not mean to say that it is to be blamed in the sense in which 

 one would reprobate a European for serious moral transgression. 

 I would not blame a cannibal in this sense. Neither do I blame 

 my critics for their " non-moral " views. But although I would 

 not blame a cannibal for eating his wife, as I would a European 

 under similar circumstances, yet I cannot but think that there 

 is some blame in the cannibal's case, and that, similarly, there is 

 some blame in the case of bio-moral transgression. 



