CONCLUSION 233 



been evolved, then does the question again, as always, 

 recur : Why and wherefore has it been evolved ? 

 What need is there for the plant to keep and cherish 

 a moth since it only does so by constant expenditure 

 of nutrition and to shape a cover at the right time, 

 not earlier and not later, so that when the moth creeps 

 out of the gall the chrysalis skin and that alone is 

 torn off ?* We can only say that it must and should 

 happen just so. 



Deperet says appropriately : ~ ' In the time in which 

 we live it would be very thoughtless to maintain that we 

 satisfactorily know the general law which has governed 

 the unceasing transformations of organic life from its 

 beginning on the earth to the present day. Neither 

 the mechanical process of a physiological adaptation, 

 nor the immediate influence of the environment, and 

 still less the struggle for existence, permit us to give 

 a suitable, sagacious, and perfect explanation of the 

 magnificent picture presented by the palaeontological 

 history of evolution. In this evolutional history there 

 are certainly, without in itself speaking anywhere of 

 the first origin of life, enigmatical points and important 

 facts in existence whose explanation eludes us/ We 

 have, it is true, for many of these ' enigmatical points/ 

 catchwords which have become very popular, but with 

 catchwords alone no problem is ever solved. In the 



1 See the excellent article, ' Ein Wunderwerk der Pflanzentechnik,' 

 by H. Dieckmann, S.J., in Natur und Kultur, 1911, p. 485. 



2 UmbiMung der Tierwelt, p 114. If Deperet himself speaks in various 

 places of the ' mechanism ' of the evolutionary process, he always means 

 thereby only the external course of development. 



