Who painted the Flowers? 27 



unremunerative product. So assured are they of this, 

 that Mr. Grant Allen, relying on an a priori method of 

 reasoning which would seem rather out of harmony with 

 modern scientific canons, unhesitatingly pronounces on 

 the past history of plants from this feature alone. 

 There is, for instance, a well-known plant, the Ribwort 

 Plantain (Plantago lanceolata), with which children play 

 at "soldiers " if indeed there still be children who care 

 to play games which cost no money. It is wind- 

 fertilized and unvisited by insects. At the same time 

 it has a perfectly-formed corolla inconspicuous indeed, 

 dark-coloured and dry, but as symmetrical in form as 

 a corolla need be. A wind-fertilized plant has no need 

 of a corolla at all, and can gain nothing by turning out 

 on every one of its flower-heads a multitude of these 

 shapely little cups. Therefore, says Mr. Allen, the 

 Plantain is a degraded plant ; it was once fertilized by 

 insects, but has for some reason or other reverted to 

 the " older and more wasteful process " of wind-ferti- 

 lization, retaining, however, in its little corolla a testi- 

 mony against itself. "Once upon a time it was a sort 

 of distant cousin to the Speedwell. But these particular 

 Speedwells gave up devoting themselves to insects, and 

 became adapted to wind-fertilization. . . . Thus every 

 plant bears upon its very face the history of its whole 

 previous development." 1 We are accordingly asked to 

 take it for granted with the same authority, 2 that the 

 bright pigments of flowers have for their main, if not 

 their only function, the attraction of insects from 

 which it would follow that a bright flower with no honey, 

 or a bright flower, at which, from any circumstance, 

 insects could not get, would be a monstrosity in nature, 

 and would as such be necessarily and speedily trampled 

 out. It is at least remarkable that what is probably the 

 most conspicuously - coloured of English flowers, the 

 Poppy, secretes no honey at all, although it is true that 

 its abundant pollen offers some reward to the bees 



^-Evolutionist at Large, pp. 137-141. - Colours of Flowers, p. 7. 



