Who painted the Flowers ? 29 



literature on this side of the question is summed up by 

 Dr. Asa Gray 1 in the proposition "that all the various 

 adaptations of flowers to insects are in view of inter- 

 crossing." It is assumed, in fact, that by a timely 

 deference to nature's "abhorrence," those plants which 

 have secured cross-fertilization have produced a vigorous 

 progeny which has stamped out the effete rivals which 

 failed to avoid a contradiction of the fundamental law. 

 " No continuously self-fertilized species would continue 

 to exist," is an aphorism of the school. But the Cel- 

 andine is a vigorous growth, making fields yellow with 

 its useless cups, and with no mark of approaching 

 extinction upon it. And how, failing its blossoms, does 

 it contrive to propagate? Simply thus. In the axils 

 of its leaves there form little proliferous bulbs, which 

 in due season, dropping off, become the parents of new 

 plants. This is the very contrary of crossing. For a 

 cross, such as is postulated, two distinct plants should 

 contribute to produce a new one, and here there is not 

 the contribution even of two distinct organs. And this 

 is by no means a solitary case : propagation on the same 

 principle is adopted by very large classes of plants. 

 Sometimes it is by runners rooting at the joints (of 

 which the Strawberry affords a familiar instance), some- 

 times by suckers, sometimes by buds, or by slips and 

 shoots. And such plants are propagated in endless 

 abundance. It has, for example, been said that all the 

 Weeping Willows we see have probably been produced 

 by slips from one common ancestor, for the willow is 

 dioecious (bearing stamens and pistils on different trees), 

 and there is no staminate Weeping Willow known in 

 Britain, and consequently the tree never fruits ; 2 while, 

 as is well known, all our cultivated Apples are propa- 

 gated by grafting, each variety carrying on through all 

 its members the life of one individual ancestor. Some 

 of these varieties (for instance, the Herefordshire " Red 



1 Ibid. p. 600. 



2 A large number of the trees of this species have been propa- 

 gated from Napoleon's Willow at St. Helena. 



