122 BULBILS AND GEMM^. 



will answer all the purposes of reproduction, and the germ- 

 plasm is seized upon to increase the bulk of the individual. 

 May we not rather conclude that, in the vegetable kingdom at 

 least, the ultimate physiognomical expression of certain portions 

 of the "physical basis of life" is dictated by the caprice of 

 environment ? For, talk as we may, proto-plasm is but "the clay 

 of the potter," to be moulded, baked, and painted as external 

 conditions shall demand. 



On the trend of the vegetable kingdom, since the first speck 

 of naked protoplasm emerged from the cosmical fire-mist, we 

 need not appeal to the philosophies. In this respect nature is 

 her own interpreter. Palseontological evidence, together with 

 what we see in the warp and woof of the earth's present carpet, 

 tends to the conclusion that the one purpose, which has ever 

 dominated the vegetable kingdom, has been the entrusting of the 

 care of the species to a distinctive set of organs. To put it in other 

 words, concomitant with the struggle for self, there has been a 

 mysterious and marvellous stretching-forth to ensure the life of 

 others. And when we compare the perfected mechanism in an 

 orchid or primrose with the reproductive processes in lowlier 

 forms of life, who shall say the struggle has not been a pre- 

 eminently successful one ? Long and tedious has been the march 

 to this goal, and possibly even now the climax has not been 

 reached, for as the author of "The Vestiges of Creation" gravely 

 asks whether our race is ' ' but the initial of the grand crowning 

 type," which shall be " superior to us in organization, purer in 

 feeling, more powerful in device and act," so may we query 

 whether our most specially-devised flowers are but the fore- 

 shadowings of a still more perfected set of reproductive organs. 



Notwithstanding the foregoing, however, many examples 

 occur, even among plants which rank in the hierarchy of 

 development, of a complete failure to produce seed. Most of the 

 mechanism is present, but, through some apparently slight defect, 

 the end for which the energies of the plants have been converg- 

 ing for untold ages has been signally thwarted. And yet the 

 struggle of plants to perpetuate their species is rarely of no 

 avail, for Nature never tires of variety, and her resources are 

 truly infinite. Let the soil combine with climatic caprices, and 



