Flowers and their Pedio^rees. 



cornfields, all aglow with the infinite wealth of 

 poppies, bluebottles, foxgloves, ox-eye daisies, and 

 purple fritillaries. The Alps alone can equal the 

 brilliant colouring of our own native British flora. 

 Poor as it is in number of species — a mere isolated 

 fragment of the wider European groups — it can fear- 

 lessly challenge the rest of the whole world in general 

 mingled effect of gaiety and luxuriance. 



r^ow, every one of these English plants and weeds 

 has a long and eventful story of its own. In the 

 days before the illuminating doctrine of evolution had 

 been preached, all we could say about them was that 

 they possessed such and such a shape, and size, and 

 colour : and if we had been asked why they were not 

 rounder or bigger or bluer than they actually are, we 

 could have given no sufficient reason, except that they 

 were made so. But since the great principle of de- 

 scent with modification has reduced the science of life 

 from chaos to rational order, we are able to do much 

 more than that We can now answer confidently, 

 Such and such a plant is what it is in virtue of such 

 and such ancestral conditions, and it has been altered 

 thus and thus by these and those variations in habit 

 or environment. Every plant or animal, therefore, be- 

 comes for us a puzzle to be explained, a problem to 

 be solved, a hieroglyphic inscription to be carefully 



