262 THE PERPETUATION OF SPECIES 



spathe lolls the black spadix, with small degenerate 

 flowers clustered round it, the female flowers being at 

 the base, the male flowers above them, all of an evil 

 purplish tint, suggestive of carrion. Lest winged 

 insects should disregard the suggestion, the flowers in 

 opening emit a stench like putrid meat, accompanied 

 by a considerable rise of temperature, as if to strengthen 

 the impression of a gaping wound. The artifice is 

 completely successful ; blowflies and others crowd in ; 

 numbers of them die, and the throat of the spathe is 

 soon choked with their corpses, but others succeed in 

 depositing their eggs, so that in two or three days the 

 mass is full of maggots, feeding on their dead uncles 

 and aunts, and wriggling among the florets on the 

 spadix. Now the point which requires elucidation is 

 this are the flies enticed into this chamber of horrors 

 and killed there either by a poisonous exhalation or by 

 some poisonous secretion they devour, solely in order 

 that the plant may derive nutriment from their bodies ? 

 or do the movements of the maggots contribute to the 

 fertilisation of the florets ? Observation and suggestion 

 are invited. 



A good illustration of the sacrifice of a noble and 

 useful species to the requirements of an ignoble and 

 useless one may be in the life history of the felted 

 beech coccus (Cryptococcus fagi), a diminutive plant- 

 louse, already referred to as committing great havoc 

 among British beech woods. 1 What good purpose can 

 be served by the perpetuation of such a creature does 

 not appear, nor would the world suffer any conceivable 



1 See p. 102 supra. 



