946 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



independently arising and usually local and minor variations, 

 separately adapted and coadjusted. 



On this view, in fact, our whole conception of variation becomes a 

 fully physiological one, and no longer so predominantly morpho- 

 logical or ecological as commonly heretofore: and this is strength- 

 ened by the introduction of florists' varieties, not usual in botanic 

 gardens; yet this by no means merely for attractiveness, but for 

 evolutionary teaching, by help of variations in manifest progress. 



For further illustration, return to the Orchids, and recall that if 

 we spend thousands on a fine collection we could in time of need 

 scarce get enough starch out of them all for a single meal for one's 

 gardener and oneself; whereas the same capital and labour, spent 

 on more vegetative monocotyledonous allies, above all cereals and 

 grasses, would have yielded us bread for many families, hay for 

 many horses, pasture for many cows. 



Even at a flower-show, besides the most gorgeous orchids, we see 

 not a few of yellowish and greenish-purple blossom — and some of 

 them almost green; and these with better-grown foliage than their 

 near congeners, and of far more easy and abundant growth, as one 

 has learned by experience, in planting a Himalayan hillside garden 

 with such relatively grassy and well-growing forms. 



Thus the popular impression of Orchids, as supremely floral, 

 becomes a little prepared for the disappointing fact that our culti- 

 vated ones are but a few hundred among some six thousand species 

 or more. Nothing is more striking in botanising in the Himalayan 

 forests and glades than the contrast between the showy arboreal 

 forms and the insignificant little patches of many terrestrial species, 

 some even with such small grassy-looking inflorescences as at first 

 to need the lens to make sure that they are indeed orchids at all; 

 for the fine labellum we are so accustomed to is now reduced to 

 little more than vestigial dimension, as well as its floral colour gone. 



Yet among all the orchids at the show, what more magnificent 

 and varied in colour than those of the genus Masdevallia, from most 

 imperial purples to vividest orange flame, and often fantastic form 

 as well ? This group is indeed so striking and varied that, long before 

 the war, when book production was less costly, its leading collector, 

 the Marquis of Lothian, desiring to bring this genus more within 

 reach of florists and botanists, and so with adequate wealth of 

 coloured plates, found his monograph could only be produced for 

 them at eight guineas! Yet Masdevallias have but a reduced and 

 insignificant labellum; and their whole magnificence is thus but 

 from the protean differentiations of the outer perianth. Hence is it 

 not a reasonable inference that this genus is really but one of those 

 many vegetative and degenerate ones above mentioned, which has 

 however returned, by a reverse swing of life's pendulum, towards 

 the ancestral floral type ; and yet is limited by its degenerate past, 



