550 KANSAS CITY HE VIEW OF SCIENCE. 
this is so intimately associated with the above that we can hardly separate them. 
The same claim is set up for color in fruits as aids in their dispersion that we 
see has been made for it in flowers as aids to their fertilization. 
Mr. Tyndall, as above, says: "Colored berries also readily attract the 
attention of birds and beasts, which feed upon them, spread their manured seeds 
abroad, thus giving the trees and shrubs possessing such berries a greater chance 
in the struggle for existence." Likewise Mr. G. Allen says : "Strawberries^ 
raspberries, and blackberries, all belong to the class of attractive fruits. They 
survive in virtue of the attention paid to them by birds and small animals." 
Of course then in the absence of these "birds and beasts," and "small ani- 
mals" all these trees and shrubs would soon perish from the face of the earth. 
How then is it that those plants destitute of colored fruits manage to survive. 
How do maples and poplars and hundreds of other trees and shrubs that have 
no colored fruits survive ? Why then do the potentilla still live, so like a straw- 
berry in all except the enlarged, fleshy receptacle that we dignify with the name 
of "fruit." "Ay," says Mr. Allen, "there's the rub. Science cannot answer 
as yet." How then can it speak so confidently in regard to the strawberry? 
Have these priests been into the secret chamber of nature and received a 
revelation of some of her secrets while others have been withheld ? That these 
colored fruits do contribute somewhat to the dispersion of their seeds may be 
very consistently admitted; but that their existence is dependent on this, or that 
this gives them any special advantage, in the battle for life, over other species 
not thus favored may be as consistently denied. This is but one of several 
means employed by the Author of nature for the dispersion of seeds and the 
consequent dissemination of plants. One class is furnished with winged seed 
(samara) that cause them to be floated on the air to a considerable distance from 
the parent tree. The maple, ash, negundo, etc., are examples of this method. 
Another is furnished with a downy pappus that causes them to float in the air to 
a long distance at times. The dandelion, thistle, fire-weed, poplar, are illustra- 
tions of this. Still another method that I may mention is where the seeds are 
furnished with barbs or hooked spines by which they attach themselves to the 
clothing of persons or to the hairy or woolly coats of passing animals, and are 
thus carried to distant places and dropped, as in the case of burdock, cocklebur, 
beggar-lice, sand-bur, etc. Any of these methods furnished just as much assur- 
ance of the proper dispersion of seed to their species as do the colored fruits to 
those kinds producing them. The fact seems to be that the system of evolution 
sought to be built up and sustained by arguments drawn from the color of fruits 
and flowers, as above, is a speculative hypothesis based on suppositions and im- 
aginings, bolstered up by doubtful analogies, and facts taken out of their true 
relations and explained by fanciful and forced interpretations. 
Canon City, Colorado. 
