Mr. Grant Aliens Botanical Fables 1 1 



meadow where the competition for vegetable food- 

 stuffs is keen and the struggle for existence bitter. 

 Hence they have been compelled to divide their 

 leaves into many finger-like segments; and only those 

 which have succeeded in doing so have managed to 

 hold their own in the struggle, and so to hand down 

 their peculiarities to future generations. As a rule, 

 just in proportion as vegetation is thick and matted, 

 do the plants of which it is composed tend to develop 

 minutely divided and attenuated foliage." 



After reading a passage like this it would seem as 

 though, in evolutionary argument, instead of the 

 theory being extracted from the facts, the facts are 

 evolved from the theory. Here is a string of asser- 

 tions fit to take away the breath of any one who will 

 but go out walking and use his eyes. 



Firstly. "All very early leaves are quite simple 

 and rounded" What is meant by early"? Does it 

 mean "the earliest forms on the earth," or those 

 which appear earliest in the year? If the first, how 

 about grasses, which certainly are amongst the oldest 

 forms of vegetation, but whose leaves though simple 

 are very much the reverse of round? Or for those 

 other forms which men of science are never weary 

 of indicating to us as the primitive vegetation of all 

 the Mosses and Horse-tails where shall we find more 

 subdivided fronds than theirs? If, on the other hand, 

 it be meant that early flowering plants have round 

 leaves, where shall we find earlier flowers than the 

 Shepherd's Purse and the Groundsel? while the Spring 

 Crocus, which certainly has the field 'pretty much to 

 itself, reduces its foliage almost to the limits of tenuity. 



Next, as to the theory on which the whole argu- 

 ment is based. "They have been compelled to 

 divide their leaves, . . . and only those which have 

 succeeded in so doing have managed to hold their 

 own." How so ? How does the subdivision of leaves 

 help a plant to obtain a larger share of "vegetable 

 food-stuffs"? It is not the edges, but the surfaces of 



