NEWS OF SPRING 



way. She thus escapes, laden with the adhesive dust, and 

 enters a neighbouring flower, where the tragedy of the ban- 

 quet, the hustling, the fall, the bath and the escape is reenacted 

 and perforce brings the imported pollen into contact with the 

 greedy stigma. 



Here, then, we have a flower that knows and plays upon 

 the passions of insects. Nor can it be pretended that all these 

 are only so many more or less romantic interpretations: no, 

 the facts have been precisely and scientifically observed and 

 it is impossible to explain the use and arrangement of the 

 flower's different organs in any other manner. We must ac- 

 cept the evidence as it stands. This incredible and efficacious 

 artifice is the more surprising inasmuch as it does not here tend 

 to satisfy the immediate cravings of hunger that sharpen the 

 dullest wits ; it has only a distant ideal in view : the propagation 

 of the species. 



But why, we shall be asked, these fantastic complications 

 which end only by increasing the risk of failure? Let us not 

 hasten to give judgment and reply. We know nothing of the 

 reasons of the plant. Do we know what obstacles the flower 

 encounters in the direction of logic and simplicity? Do we 

 know thoroughly a single one of the organic laws of its ex- 



[ 90 3. 



