954 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



exact working of their "dimorphism" — of long-styled and short- 

 styled forms ("pin-eyed and thrum-eyed", as children call them) in 

 detail, and in relation to the fertilising insect, and also verified by 

 his sowings the advantage of such inter-crossing, that subject has 

 seemed settled for most botanists, as for long ourselves included. 

 But with this additional physiological concept, of vegetative and 

 floral oscillation and relative preponderance, do we not understand 

 the matter a step more fuUy? For the long-styled Primulas are 

 slightly the bigger and better growers, yet with not quite such large 

 corollas: while this growth and flower difference becomes so well- 

 marked in the Auriculas, as at once to explain why florists bring no 

 pin-eyed forms to the flower-show. Again, the common and fine 

 garden-variety of primrose with petaloid calyx ("Hose in Hose") is 

 obviously far more floral than the variety with sepals developed as 

 spreading leaves ("Jack in the Green"). These two contrasted varia- 

 tions are now manifestly no longer "spontaneous" or "indefinite", 

 but each an intelligible further development of the ordinary contrast 

 of more floral and more vegetative type respectively, and each 

 carried below the essential flower organs, to their floral envelopes 

 also, so with floral or vegetative calyx respectively; and with this 

 contrast clearly represented in the fuller foliage of the more verdant- 

 flowered variety. It wiU be found, too, as we would now expect, 

 that the latter is the more usually pin-eyed; and vice versa for 

 the other and doubly floral form. Similarly in passing to other 

 orders and genera, say the common snapdragon (Antirrhinum), we 

 at once see and understand how their "giants" — though more floral 

 than the parent species (normally taller still) — are far surpassed in 

 floral size, colour, and beauty by the much smaller "dwarfs". 

 Converse observations can next be made, along a wayside, on the 

 variations of the common plantain {Plantago lanceolata), and so on 

 throughout nature and gardens alike. If so, have we not here a 

 process of origin of varieties, and even of species and more? The 

 palaeontologists are often strong on the definiteness of variation, 

 but this is often explained away as being possibly but the result of 

 natural selection; and it is difficult to answer this when forms are 

 dead and gone, and so beyond observation in the life from either 

 viewpoint. Hence the value of such observations as the above on 

 variations in life. And here most obviously for the more floral forms, 

 where the variation is so manifestly from within ; and where natural 

 selection, even if aiding so far — as when there is nectar or con- 

 spicuousness to insects — also wields the shears of Fate, and cuts off 

 the most fully floral, since less vigorously vegetative. Here is the 

 reason why the finest flower varieties are so costly — ^f or instance the 

 splendid "Parrot tulips", so delicate and perishable compared with 

 the bud-like and well-growing "Darwins". Little further observation 

 is needed to show how large is the ovary in the highly vegetative 



