EVOLUTION 961 



Growth doctrines have once and again been suggested; even 

 elaborately argued for; as so notably, and for very various animal 

 groups, by eminent American palaeontologists especially — Cope, 

 Marsh, and Hyatt as conspicuous examples. Indeed, the first-named 

 considerably elaborated his doctrine of "bathmism", as a present- 

 ment of evolutionary changes through growth. This was ridiculed 

 at the time as but a repetition of little Topsy's account of her own 

 antecedents ('"Spec's I growed!"): yet Goethe's view of living 

 nature, Robert Chambers' treatment in his not uninfluential pre- 

 paration for Darwin's more thorough presentment of the general 

 evidences of evolution, and, indeed, earlier precursors also, may here 

 be recalled. The harmonisation of theories above suggested thus 

 needs all it can gain from those earlier ones also. 



Again, while all such growth-interpretations of evolutionary 

 change are unfavourable to the strictly mechanistic — and thus 

 apsychic — view of their origin and correlation, they cannot but be 

 welcomed by all the schools which are open to consider the com- 

 presence of a psychic element or aspect in the life of organisms. For 

 on any of their views these can no longer be conceived apart from 

 individual development and general evolution, but as in some way 

 related to it. Yet the question of how far such relation is but epi- 

 phenomenal, and how far active, even more or less co-ordinative, 

 obviously affords ample field for inquiry and discussion. (See 

 Chapter XIII, The Theory of Life.) 



MUTATIONS IN SNAPDRAGONS.— There are few flowers in the 

 garden that surpass snapdragons in variety of coloration, and yet 

 almost all the well-established cultivated races have had their 

 origin in one natural species {Antirrhinum majus). It has proved 

 itself one of the most sporting of plants, like Lamarck's Evening 

 Primrose. Its mood is all for mutation; it is always producing 

 something new, not only in the way of dehghtful soft colours, such 

 as rose and orange, but in other characters, such as the foliage, and 

 what one may venture to call the grimace of the flower. 



Everyone has a soft heart for snapdragons, not only because they 

 are beautiful, vigorous, frolicsome flowers, but because they never 

 fail to reawaken a reminiscence of one of our earliest childhood 

 experiments, when we fumblingly opened the dragon's mouth and 

 looked down his throat, or inverted him into a munching rabbit. 

 We did not know then that the flower keeps its mouth shut so as to 

 protect the pollen and nectar, especially from unwelcome insect 

 visitors. The welcome visitor is the Humble-bee, whose weight on the 

 landing-stage is enough to open the corolla. Sometimes a biggish 

 butterfly does the trick; and both bee and butterfly are, meta- 

 phorically speaking, welcome, since they carry the pollen from 

 blossom to blossom, and thus bring about cross-fertiUsation. Not 



VOL. II Q 



