CHAPTER XV 



GENERAL ADAPTATIONS OF PLANTS, ANIMALS, AND MAN 



THE adaptations of plants and animals, more especially as 

 regards the cross-fertilisation of flowers by insects, forms 

 a very important part of Darwin's work, and has been fully 

 and popularly elaborated since by Grant Allen, Sir John 

 Lubbock (now Lord Avebury), Hermann Miiller, and many 

 other writers. I have also myself given a general account 

 of the whole subject both in my Tropical Nature, and my 

 Darwinism ; but as there are some points of importance 

 which, I believe, have not yet been discussed, and as the 

 readers of this volume may not be acquainted with the vast 

 extent of the evidence, I will here give a short outline of the 

 facts before showing how it bears upon the main argument 

 of the present work. 



Another reason why it is necessary to recapitulate the 

 evidence is that those whose knowledge of this subject is 

 derived from having read the Origin of Species only, can have 

 no idea whatever of the vast mass of observations the author 

 of that work had even then collected on the subject, but 

 found it impossible to include in it. He there only made a 

 few general, and often hypothetical, references both to the 

 facts of insect-fertilisation, and to the purpose of cross- 

 fertilisation. On the latter point he makes this general 

 statement : " I have come to this conclusion (that flowers 

 are coloured to attract insects) from finding it an invariable 

 rule that when a flower is fertilised by the wind it never has 

 a gaily-coloured corolla." Then a few lines farther on he 

 adverts to beautifully coloured fruits and says : " But the 

 beauty serves merely as a guide to birds and beasts, in order 

 that the fruit may be devoured and the matured seed 



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