Some Wayside Problems 51 



always to the left. It is useless to attempt to make 

 them reverse their practice. They will untwine and 

 fall from their support rather than do so. It is not, 

 I repeat, a little difficult to understand what particular 

 advantage they have gained by such pertinacity? 

 It will perhaps be said that the first plant of each 

 species which developed the twining faculty adopted 

 that mode of twining which has been perpetuated in 

 its descendants. But such an explanation does but 

 land us in a region of mystery lower still than that 

 from which it seeks to extricate us. It would mean 

 that all individual Convolvulus plants, for instance, 

 are descended from one original progenitor. Yet this 

 is precisely what evolutionists, when arguing against 

 the fixity of species, assume to be impossible. The 

 idea which they are never weary of inculcating is 

 that like circumstances have in countless different 

 instances produced like results, different individuals 

 of one form being forced by their surroundings into 

 another. But can the circumstances have been so 

 absolutely identical as this? And it must not be 

 forgotten, keeping still to the instance I have taken, 

 that there are a multitude of species of Convolvulus 

 differing widely in many respects, but agreeing in 

 their mode of turning. Does the evolutionary hypo- 

 thesis afford any very satisfactory mode of accounting 

 for such agreement coupled with such difference. 



This topic suggests another remark in confirma- 

 tion of my contention that there is a large field for 

 the most ordinary observer to work. in. One of the 

 few books in which I have found any notice of this 

 singular feature in the habits of such plants, after 

 enumerating examples of those which adopt a deter- 

 mined course, goes on to say, that others vary their 

 practice, some individuals of the species twining one 

 way and some the other, and as an instance of this 

 cites the Bittersweet^ or Woody Nightshade (Solanum 

 Dulcamara). Now, if true, this is singular, so singular 

 as to deserve verification. Luckily the Bittersweet 



