6i4 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[June 29, li 



The Origin of Floral Structures through Insect and other 

 Agencies. By the Rev. George Henslow, M.A., 

 F.L.S., F.G.S , Professor of Botany, Queen's College, 

 etc. London : Kegan Paul, Trench and Co. 



This work is by no means the least important member 

 of the selection of works — chiefly valuable — which have 

 appeared under the unhappy title of the "International 

 Scientific Series." The author, a convinced evolutionist, 

 declares that from the very first appearance of Darwin's 

 book he felt great difficulty in accepting natural selection 

 as the real origin of species, and, like the elder Darwin, 

 Lamarck, and St. Hilaire, has "looked to the environ- 

 ment as affording a better clue to the source of varia- 

 tions." Natural selection, he thinks, will more readily 

 account for the disappearance of old forms of life than 

 for the origin of new ones. In this view he is sup- 

 ported by unquestionable authorities, such as A. R. 

 Wallace, Dr. Aug. Weismann, Dr. C. Semper, and Dr. 

 A. de Bary. 



We may congratulate the author that he has elected to 

 work out the question in the botanical region. Illustra- 

 tions of evolution, its laws and its causes, have been 

 taken too exclusively from the animal kingdom. Yet, as 

 Professor J. M. Coulter remarks, among plants the case 

 is even more striking. The fertility of hybrids is there 

 far more common, and wc find such " interminable 

 intergrading that fixity of species becomes a dream of 

 the past." 



The work has, in consequence of its plan, a two-fold 

 character. On the one hand it throws an additional 

 and often very novel light on the origins of modifications 

 in the organic world; and on the other it supplies an 

 assortment of most interesting botanical facts. Much of 

 this latter kind of matter will, however, be imperfectly 

 intelligible to persons not versed in botanical nomen- 

 clature. We must be pardoned for feeling a wish that 

 some competent phytologist would vindertake to translate 

 these technicalities into English — a task which we are 

 convinced might be effected without any sacrifice of pre- 

 cision and brevity. 



The author's starting point was the following simple 

 observation : — "In 1869, when watching a large humble- 

 bee hanging on to the dependent stamens of Ji-pilobiiim 

 angmtifoliimi, the idea first occurred to me that insects 

 themselves might be the real cause of many peculiarities 

 in the structure of flowers. The thought passed through 

 mj' mind that the way the stamens hung down might 

 perhaps have become a hereditary effect from the re- 

 peatedly applied weight of the bees." Working out this 

 idea he comes to a conclusion which we may contrast 

 with the theory of " natural selection." According to 

 this latter hypothesis," we may suppose that a plant bore 

 seedlings, some of which had, we will say, the corolla 

 accidentally (that means from some unknown cause 

 arising from ivithin) larger on one side than the other, and 

 then such a flower, being selected by insects, left off- 

 spring which, by gradual improvement through repeated 

 selections, ultimately reached the form it now possesses." 



In the other hypothesis, as developed by Professor 

 Henslow, "we suppose that the first impulse came from 

 without, being developed by the insect itself; so that the 

 variation, once set up in a definite direction, went on im- 

 proving under the constantly repeated stimulus of insect 

 visitors, until the form of the flower was actually con- 

 formable to the insect itself. 



This latter hypothesis, which the author calls that of 

 "constitutional selection," has certain very weigbty ad- 

 vantages. It assigns a direct physical cause for the 

 incipient change, instead of some accidental or unac- 

 countable variation as assumed on the hypothesis of 

 natural selection. In the second place it does not re- 

 quire the plant to develop an indefinite number of useless 

 changes, to be all discarded in favour of the one or the 

 few wanted. Lastly, as a great number of flowers would 

 be visited on many plants, great numbers of them might 

 yield offspring advancing in the same direction, and 

 there would be no fear of the improved strain being 

 diluted down to the original form. The anti-Darwinian 

 argument of Fleeming Jenkins is rendered completely 

 nugatory. 



Some remarks, showing that survival does not by any 

 means necessarily fall to the lot of the " fittest," deserve 

 notice. Says the writer, " Seeds which fall on the 

 circumference of a crowd, or on a better soil than that on 

 which others may happen to lie, are thereby "selected," 

 but it is through no merit of their own ; just as out of 

 the thousands of eggs of a salmon a few only escape the 

 jaws of their enemies: so that simply "good luck" 

 plays an important part in determining which shall sur- 

 vive and come to maturity in both kingdoms alike." 



We have, of course, not space to follow the author 

 through the systematic development of his hypothesis as 

 shown in the principles of number, arrangement, co- 

 hesion, adhesion, secretive tissues, the sensitiveness of 

 plant-organs, the colours of flowers, etc. Still less can 

 we quote the interesting facts which are thickly scattered 

 through the work. But it is one, we think, which no 

 naturalist, be he botanist or zoologist, can read without 

 pleasure or profit. 



Proceedings of the Clevela)id Institution of Engineers, 

 April i6th, 1888. Middlesbrough : Office of Cleve- 

 land Institution of Engineers. 



The first subject of the meeting was the " Architects 

 Registration Bill " now being introduced into Parliament 

 The council and members adopted the view of the Insti- 

 tution of Civil Engineers, that the principle of the Bill is 

 to be rejected, as likely to benefit neither the profession 

 nor the public. 



The remaining part of the meeting was taken up with 

 a paper on the Stockton and Middlesbrough Corporation 

 Water Works, containing nothing of general interest. 



Transactions of the Mining Institute 0/ Scotland. Annual 

 Meeting, April 26th, 1888. Vol. x., part i. 



This issue comprises the inaugural address of the new 

 president, Mr. J. M. Ronaldson. Here some emphasis is 

 laid on the fact that for coal-mining purposes the lamp of 

 the future has not yet made its appearance. 



A discussion then followed on a system of endless 

 rope haulage in use at the Newbattle Collieries, but the 

 time of the meeting was mainly taken up with an account 

 of Scottish mining legislation in former days. It is not 

 generally known that up to the end of the last century 

 colliers and persons employed in salt-works were in a 

 state of serfdom, bound for life to the establishments 

 where they were employed, and transferable with the 

 collieries and salt-works. 



In the abstracts given from other papers, it is 

 mentioned that the deposits of copper pyrites' at Huelva 

 had been diligently worked by the Romans, and that 

 with so much skill and judgment that even at the 

 present time a mine bearing no marks of their activity is 



