Vegetal Evolution. 139 



spout lies the viscid stigma, and next it the viscid 

 glands of the pollen masses. Above the bucket bees 

 come to feed on the fleshy ridges of the labellum, 

 and as they crowd one another some tumble into the 

 water. As they cannot fly away with wet wings, 

 they crawl out through the spout, brushing some of 

 the pollen off in their exit. On tumbling into the 

 bath of another caryanthes, they thus fertilise its 

 stigma on their road out again. 



The evolution of such complicated mechanisms 

 seems beyond the compass of the slow automatic 

 improvements accomplished by natural selection alone, 

 and would appear to involve a Designer. But all 

 evidence demonstrates that even the most wonderful 

 natural contrivances are quite capable of being effected 

 by unconscious automatic agencies, provided we only 

 grant time enough. And of time there is ever a 

 plethora in natural operations. 



(5) Leading biologists lately distinguished vegetals 

 from animals by ascribing only to animals the posses- 

 sion of nerves and a nervous system. But further 

 researches demonstrated that nerves were no more 

 indispensible to nervous actiqn than muscles are to 

 organic motion. If nervous action be simply the 

 property of transmitting influence from one part of 

 an organism to another, then plants, if not as nervous 

 as animals, are at least as much so as their mechanism 

 permits. As Huxley says, " a nerve is in essence 

 nothing but a linear tract of specially modified pro- 

 toplasm between two points of an organism, one of 



