9o6 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



In plant evolution there seems especially manifested the repression 

 of reproductive development and maturity by the cold of the I^e 

 Ages, with encouragement to the vegetative life by the ample 

 moisture available below the margin of snow and ice, so that the 

 vast development and differentiation of the grassy, sedgy, and 

 rushy types, from simpler and more flowery liliaceous ancestry, 

 becomes more intelligible. And that this is no mere speculative 

 gaze into the glacial past is manifest in every alpine area, as so 

 notably in the Swiss meadow; for though so bright and varied in 

 its spaces of flower-favouring sunshine, the grassy types are still 

 predominant; and in its shady nooks the surviving orchid flowers 

 are often green; in striking contrast with their sun-loving kindred 

 and neighbours. 



Recall, too, as at once favoured and urged by hard conditions, 

 that mothering of offspring, even within the parental body, which 

 is so much older, deeper, and more general in the plant world than 

 in the animal: witness the flower with its long-hidden secret, its 

 protection of the reproductive generation by the more vegetative 

 and asexual one (Chapter VII). In all manner of ways, then, the 

 significance of palaeontology for evolution, of past for present, 

 becomes increasingly encouraging to continued inquiry. 



PALiEONTOGRAPHY AND PRESENT DISTRIBUTION.— The 



term "palaeontography" for our "ancient-beings-lore" helps to 

 express the scientific resurrection of life throughout its past, since 

 for the true palaeontologist — as distinguished from mere collector — 

 his plant and animal fossils live anew, and in the very environment 

 of their lives. Past landscapes and seas thus reappear, wellnigh as 

 plain before his inward eye as those which to-day surround him. 

 Moreover, fossil forms are increasingly revealing their various lines 

 of evolution, and thus illuminating those continued by our modern 

 species, as from horses or elephants to molluscs, or again from ferny 

 forests to that floral exuberance of nature of which our greatest 

 gardens are but a scanty gathering. 



Yet as the student of history is apt to remain in his chosen 

 period and leave the historic interest of his own times to the 

 everyday newspaper mind, so the palseontographer and the field- 

 naturalist too seldom bring these interests together into their real 

 and vital continuity. The geographical distribution of plants and 

 animals thus remains, to most students and to many writers, a 

 practically separated sub-science of Biology: whereas its descrip- 

 tions are of the current scene of the life-drama, that which in its 

 turn is occupying the world-stage. Yet every geologist, geographer, 

 and taxonomist knows this, and as no mere general statement. 

 Their attempt is to realise, to trace and visualise, with ever-increas- 

 ing concreteness, each of the long succession of past ages which 



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