Cuckoo- Pint. 263 



have bright-coloured petals to attract the eyes of 

 insects, we know that fruits have bright-coloured 

 pulpy coverings to attract the eyes of birds or mam- 

 mals. And as the flowers put honey in their nectaries 

 as an allurement for the bees, so the fruits put 

 sugary juices in their pulp as an allurement for the 

 robins and bullfinches. So far, the trick is just the 

 ordinary plan of all fruit-bearers. The arum, however, 

 has a still more cruel and insidious mode of procedure. 

 Its berries are poisonous ; and very often, I believe, they 

 destroy the little birds that they have enticed by their 

 delusive prettiness. Then the body of the murdered 

 robin decays away, and forms a mouldering manure- 

 heap, from which the young cuckoo-pint derives a 

 store of fresh nutriment. I will not positively assert 

 that it is for this reason the cuckoo-pint has acquired 

 its poisonous juices ; but I cannot help seeing that if 

 any berry happened to show any tendency in such a 

 direction, and so occasionally poisoned the creatures 

 which eat it, it would thereby obtain an advantage in 

 the struggle for existence, and would tend to increase 

 the poisonous habit so far as it continued to obtain 

 any further advantage by so doing. To some people 

 this may seem grotesque ; but the grotesqueness is in 

 the facts of nature, not in the appreciation of their 

 inevitable results. Poisonous berries are unquestion7 



