30 Who painted the Flowers ? 



streak "and "Fox whelp") are known to have existed 

 for nearly three centuries. Indeed, so far from being 

 unduly handicapped in the race by their utter neglect of 

 the fundamental law, these self-propagating plants are 

 precisely the most rampant and aggressive of all, and the 

 most difficult to get rid of. 



For instance, the Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus 

 repent) is designated "a troublesome weed" because it 

 increases by creeping roots or scions, which take root 

 wherever a leaf is produced; the Coltsfoot (Tussilago 

 Farfara) is almost ineradicable, because any fragment 

 of its long and brittle roots serves to produce a new 

 plant; and a variety of the Lady's Smock (Cardamine 

 pratensis) merits the designation "remarkably proli- 

 ferous" because, while its flowers become incapable of 

 fertilization, owing to doubling, the leaflets as they come 

 to the ground produce fresh plants. 



There seem, therefore, to be facts, on the very 

 threshold of the inquiry, which may at least justify 

 us in pausing before we accept the doctrine which is 

 so unhesitatingly laid down. 



But the most interesting portion of my task will 

 consist in an examination of the case made out by 

 the advocates for the insects. Before undertaking such 

 examination of some facts of this case, which will raise 

 some new points as well as some of those already 

 noticed, it will be well to state precisely once again 

 what is my contention. I do not at all wish to deny 

 that insects are of service to flowers, nor, this being so, 

 that there are many "arrangements" on both sides to 

 secure that the service be effectually rendered. But 

 given a fact, many modern writers are far too prone to 

 found on it an hypothesis which depends far more on an 

 a priori conception of the fitness of things than on the 

 fact with which it is thought to square. The hypothesis 

 once stated is then far too often itself treated as a fact, 

 and it is sought to make out a case for it by quoting 

 other facts which seem to bear it out. The making out 

 of such a case is not difficult, and is apt, quite unin- 



