Jory—The Bright Colours of Alpine Flowers. - 151 
In short, we may suppose the entire development of the plant, 
towards meeting certain groups of external conditions, physiologi- 
cally knit together according as Nature tends to associate certain 
groups of conditions. Thus, in the case in point, climatic rigour 
and scarcity of fertilizing agency will ever be associated; and in 
the long experience of the past the most economical physiological 
attitude towards both is, we may suppose, adopted. So that the 
presence of one condition excites the apparent unconscious memory 
of the other. In reality the process of meeting the one condition 
involves the process and development for meeting the other. 
And this consideration may be extended very generally to 
such organisms as can survive under the same associated natural 
conditions, for the history of evolution is so long, and the power of 
locomotion so essential to the organism at some period in its life 
history, that we cannot philosophically assume a local history for 
members of a species even if widely severed geographically at the 
present day. At some period in the past, then, it is very possible 
that the species to-day thriving at Paris, acquired the expe- 
rience called out at Upsala. The perfection of physiological 
memory inspires no limit to the date at which this may have 
occurred—possibly the result of a succession of severe seasons at 
Paris; possibly the result of migrations—and the seed of many 
flowering plants possess means of migration only inferior to that 
possessed by the flying and swimming animals. But, again, 
possibly the experience was acquired far back in the evolutionary 
history of the flower.! 
But a further consideration arises. Not only at each moment in 
the life of the individual must maximum income and most judi- 
cious expenditure be considered, but in its whole life history, and 
even over the history of its race, the efficiency must tend to be a 
maximum. ‘This principle is even carried so far that when neces- 
sary it leads to the death of the individual, as in the case of 
1 The blooms of self-fertilising, and especially of cleistogamic plants (e.g. Viola). are 
examples of unconscious memory, or unconscious ‘association of ideas’’ leading to 
the development of organs now functionless. The Pontederia crassipes of the Amazon, 
which develops its floating bladders when grown in water, but aborts them rapidly when 
grown on land, and seems to retain this power of adaptation to the environment for an 
indefinite period of time, must act in each case upon an unconscious memory based 
upon past experience. Many other cases might be cited. 
