CHAPTER VII 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLOWERS 



The reader may now begin to understand the large 

 variety of living nature. But there are, as I know 

 from questions at the close of lectures on Evolution, 

 always a few who say that this variety is puzzling 

 from another point of view. Why do the older types 

 of animals and plants remain at all? One can under- 

 stand that in the beginning all animals and plants 

 were ** microbes" (single cells). One can follow the 

 story when the man of science says that life later 

 rose to the level of the ferns and mosses, the jelly- 

 fishes and corals; later again to that of reptiles and 

 cycads; still later to that of roses and eagles and 

 men. But why did not the whole world move on? 

 Why did not ferns and salamanders and lung-fishes, 

 etc., die out when they gave birth to higher forms? 

 Or why did they not all evolve ? 



One has only to take a simple and important ex- 

 ample, and the answer is plain. The fishes gave birth 

 to the land animals, which are much higher. But it 

 would be obviously absurd to expect the fishes then 

 to die out, or all to leave the ocean. The waters re- 

 mained their natural and sufficient home, while the 



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