THE ORIGIN OF PETALS. 13 



historical explanation (which Wolf and Goethe of 

 course never meant it to be). Flowers can and do 

 exist without petals, which are no essential part of 

 the organism, but a mere set of attractive coloured 

 advertisements for alluring insects ; but no flower can 

 possibly exist without stamens, which are one of the 

 two essential reproductive organs in the plant. With- 

 out pollen, no flower can set its seeds. A parallel 

 from the animal world will make this immediately 

 obvious. Hive-bees consist of three kinds the 

 queens or fertile females, the drones or males, and 

 the workers or neuters. Now it would be absurd to 

 ask whether the queens were developed from an 

 original class of neuters, or the neuters from an 

 original class of fertile females. Neuters left to them- 

 selves would die out in a single generation : they are 

 really sterilised females, set apart for a special function 

 on behalf of the hive. It is just the same with petals : 

 they are sterilised stamens, set apart for the special 

 function of attracting insects on behalf of the entire 

 flower. But to ask which came first, the petals or the 

 stamens, is as absurd as to ask which came first, the 

 male and female bees or the neuters. 



Indeed, if we examine closely the waterlily petals, 

 it is really quite impossible to conceive of the transi- 

 tion as taking place from petals to stamens instead of 

 from stamens to petals. It is quite easy to under- 

 stand how the filament of an active stamen may 

 become gradually flattened, and the anthers (or pollen- 

 sacs) progressively void and functionless : but it is 

 very difficult to understand how or why a petal should 

 first begin to develop an abortive anther, and then a 

 partially effective anther, and at last a perfect stamen. 



