Vegetal Evolution. 137 



less evolved from one another. Intelligence has no 

 aristocratic pedigree, still less a divine origin ; mind 

 is not transmitted by inheritance, even as genius does 

 not run in families. Condition, position, and oppor- 

 tunity are the chief as they are also the chance 

 elements of success with vegetals as with animals. 



(4) Mechanism is usually associated with artificial 

 machinery ; but the physicist recognises mechanical 

 operations in, and applies mechanical terms to, the 

 simplest natural processes. Every plant, scientifically, 

 is more or less of a machine, the more complex 

 necessarily containing more parts, and consequently 

 evolving more complex and numerous motions. 



The genesis of vegetal mechanism and motion 

 commences low down in the scale, and may be 

 strikingly seen in the sunflower slowly turning its 

 huge head sunwards as our great luminary travels 

 from east to west ;* in tulips and innumerable other 

 flowers and leaves sleeping ; and in twining plants 

 circumnutating. In the orchids, however, the highest 

 flights of mechanical genius are attained. Their 

 mechanisms indeed remind us of mouse-traps, gins, 

 snares, and other human contrivances. All are associ- 

 ated with the processes of reproduction, especially 

 fertilisation, and, strange to say, birds and insects are 

 introduced as unwitting partners in the business. One 

 of the simplest contrivances (in the salvia) displays a 

 cross-bar lightly balanced on a filament, loaded with 

 pollen in an anther at one end. The associate insect 



* Undoubtedly a magnetic attraction. 



