The Daisy's Pedigree. ii 



I have to say without one : and that is all that is at 

 all necessary for my present purpose. 



The question as to how the daisy came to be what 

 it is, is comparatively a new one. Until a short time 

 ago everybody took it for granted that daisies had 

 always been daisies, cowslips always cowslips, and 

 primroses always primroses. But those new and truer 

 views of nature which we owe to Mr. Darwin and Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer have lately taught us that every 

 plant and every animal has a long history of its own, 

 and that this history leads us on through a wonderful 

 series of continuous metamorphoses compared with 

 which Daphne's or Arethusa's were mere single 

 episodes. The new biology shows us that every 

 living thing has been slowly moulded into its existing 

 shape by surrounding circumstances, and that it bears 

 upon its very face a thousand traces of its earlier 

 stages. It thus invests the veriest weed or the tiniest 

 insect with a fresh and endless interest : it elevates 

 them at once into complex puzzles for our ingenuity 

 — problems quite as amusing and ten times as in- 

 structive as those for whose solution the weekly 

 papers offer such attractive and unattainable prizes. 

 What is the meaning of this little spur ? .How did it 

 get that queer little point ? Why has it developed 

 those fluffy little hairs ? These are the questions 



