HOLLY BERRIES. 121 



seek out their meaning. The holly-berries are pretty 

 and pleasing, no doubt. Linnaeus cautious, observant 

 old Swede would have contented himself with a 

 minute description of the holly tree. Every character 

 of leaf, stem, fruit, and flower would have been duly 

 noted as a guide to classification. 



Nature, in those days, was regarded as a well- 

 ordered museum. " Here's a holly, and there's an 

 apple," was the tacit summation of botany in bygone 

 days. They were species-makers and variety-mongers 

 in those times, and were uncompromising advocates of 

 exact description and enumeration of the characters of 

 animals and plants. We have changed all that, thanks 

 to the master-spirits which have taught us that nothing 

 in nature stands solitary or alone. There has been 

 a tremendous searching out of the " reason why " of 

 everything since the days of Linnaeus. Books on 

 botany, written, say, thirty years ago, are filled with 

 dry details and detached facts. Now the dry bones 

 of description are made to glow with vitality, and the 

 facts are linked together like pearls on a string, to 

 make up an interesting story of how things have 

 come to be what they are. Holly-berries were pro- 

 bably as red and holly leaves were as green in the 

 past cycles as they are now and that was all. 

 To-day, one wants to know why the leaves are green, 

 why the berries are red, and what uses and purposes 

 both serve, not merely as a part of holly-life, but as 

 parcel of plant-existence at large. 



Between fruits and flowers, in the matter of colour, 

 there is a close and intimate association. Every school- 

 boy who is taught botany, knows that flowers are 

 coloured to attract insects, while the insects in turn 

 cross-fertilise the plants by carrying the pollen-dust 



