14 



THE GAB DE NEBS 1 CHRONICLE. 



[July 7, 1888. 



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APPOINTMENTS FOR THE ENSUING WEEK. 



MEETINGS. 



MONDAY, July 9— Chambre Syndicate of Ghent. 



( Royal Horticultural Society : Scien- 

 TUESDAY, July 10-' tine, Fruit, and Floral Commit- 



( tees. 

 THURSDAY, July 12— Edinburgh Botanic Society. 



SHOWS. 



TUESDAY July 10 ^ ^P^'ch' Twickenham, Gloucester, 



I and Oxford. 



( Glasgow and West of Scotland, 

 WEDNESDAY", July 11-' Ealing, York Florists', Bedford, 

 ( and Tunbridge Wells. 



THURSDAY, July 12 i Chiswiek, Winchester Birming- 

 ( ham, and Carlton-in-TV orksop. 



FRIDAY, July 13-i N 'S,, Bri g hton - Manchester, and 



& Morris' Rooms. 

 First portion of the Downside Col- 

 lection of Orchids, on the pre- 

 mises. Downside, Leatherhead, 

 by Messrs. Protheroe & Morris. 

 Nursery Stock, at Messrs. Ewing 

 ,,,,,,,.;,,,; ; ,,./ & Co.'s Sea View Nurseries. 



^ Hants, by Messrs. Protheroe & 

 Morris. 



The majority — probably a large 

 arewhatlte majority— of flower-lovers are con- 

 are. " tent to admire flowers as they are, 



without troubling themselves with 

 speculations as to the reason why and how the 

 flowers have assumed the shapes in which we 

 now see them. Topsy's answer, "Spect they 

 growed," represents the attitude of such folk. 

 It is not necessary to point out how much such 

 people lose, but it is, nevertheless, a matter for 

 regret that so much intellectual pleasure, to say 

 nothing of potential practical utility, is thus 

 allowed to run to waste. Happily the waste 

 has been very materially checked since the 

 advent of the Darwinian era. Botany, which 

 to many seemed a mere dry-as-dust sort 

 of business, disfigured by a barbarous termino- 

 logy and a sesquipedalian nomenclature, has been 

 shown in its true light as a study which while 

 capable of yielding the most refined pleasure, 

 supplies excellent mental discipline and illus- 

 trates and explains many of the most profound 

 phenomena of existence. 



From such a point of view must be con- 

 sidered the Rev. George Henslow's re- 

 cent work*, which is devoted to the con- 



* The Origin of Florid Structures through /meet and other 

 Agencies. Kegax Paul, Trench & Co. 



sideratioc of how and why flowers present 

 the diversities of structure and appearance 

 which give us so much delight. Mr. Henslow's 

 natural aptitudes for the work he has under- 

 taken have been very materially aided by the faci- 

 lities offered him in his post as Secretary to the 

 Scientific Committee of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society. This work, then, may in a measure be set 

 to the credit of the Society to which Mr. Henslow 

 has for many years contributed efficient aid. 

 The causes which have been influential in 

 making flowers what they are, are referable to 

 two in particular — hereditary endowment and 

 external influence. No one can impugn the 

 statement, that plants, like other living 

 beings, are, in a large measure, what they are 

 because their predecessors and progenitors 

 were so also ; a child inherits, in very varying 

 extent, the characteristics of his father and of his 

 mother, they of their predecessors, and so on ; 

 and so also with plants. 



In addition to these hereditary endowments 

 plants are subjected to external conditions 

 — they are, like the rest of us, dependent on 

 circumstances — on the " environment," as it is 

 now the custom to call the aggregate effect of 

 the circumstances. But in their time the parents 

 must have been submitted to varying circum- 

 stances, and so on till the very beginning of 

 things — a period utterly beyond human ken. 

 Some suggestion, however, of things as they 

 were in the beginning and their subsequent 

 course is offered in the progress of each indi- 

 vidual living organism, plant, or animal, in its 

 passage from a speck of protoplasm (itself a highly 

 complex unit), to the fully developed state. 



And so it comes to pass that the thorough 

 investigation of the life history of any one plant 

 or animal, pursued with all the niceties of re- 

 search which modern chemistry, modern micro- 

 scopes, and other instruments afford, throws light 

 upon the course of events and the history of living 

 beings generally, from the most remote to the 

 present time, and shows how they have been 

 influenced and modified according to circum- 



In the work before us, Professor Henslow 

 passes in review the chief variations in the 

 form of the flower in the so-called flowering 

 plants, arranging them according to the number 

 of their parts, their mutual relations/their isola- 

 tion or association, their form, their colour, 

 and so forth. All this has, of course, been 

 done before, and may be read in any 

 text-book. The novelty of Professor Henslow's 

 treatise consists in the explanations he affords of 

 these phenomena, and in the suggestions he 

 offers as to the causes producing them. Whether 

 the reader agree with the author's conclusions, or 

 whether he dissent from them, is a matter of 

 relatively little importance. It is of the greatest 

 value to have the phenomena presented to us so 

 clearly in a new light, and their discussion from 

 a new point of view, can hardly fail to be of great 

 value to botanical science, while it will afford an 

 infinite source of interest to the reader. Given 

 the organism, and accepted the idea of its ten- 

 dency to change, Mr. Henslow sets himself to 

 the task of inquiring what caused it to change. 

 He is not content with saying that the 

 tendency is innate ; that it changes because it is 

 an attribute of the creature to change, or any 

 such meaningless formula, but he endeavours to 

 penetrate the reason why. This reason he finds 

 in the " environment." Paiey's notion, we all 

 know, was, that these wonderful and " purpose- 

 ful " structures were " designed," and designed, 

 no doubt, they were, but in a much broader and 

 wider sense than ever Paley dreamt of. Pai.ey's 



views were of necessity limited and contracted. 

 His notions do not go beyond the idea of 

 a watchmaker with the materials made to 

 his hand and ignore the source of both the 

 watchmaker and of the agencies and materials 

 which the watchmaker must employ or by which 

 he must be influenced. Mr. Henslow, as Paley 

 would have done, revolts from the idea that these 

 structures could be the ultimate result of any 

 number of accidental and apparently at first 

 purposeless variations, and looks to the " envi- 

 ronment " as affording a better clue to the source- 

 of variations. Of course the " environment " is 

 as much the work of Supreme Intelligence as the 

 creature; and Mr. Henslow attaches a wider 

 significance to the " environment " than Darwin, 

 or, at least, than some of his followers did, and 

 by so doing he will no doubt disarm the opposition, 

 which otherwise might be raised to his views. The 

 general idea is that the form of flowers, or 

 at least of such as are fertilised by insects, is due 

 to a process of selection operating in this wise : 

 A flower varies in some minute particulars — 

 why, is not explained ; one 'or more of these 

 variations prove to be beneficial to the plant 

 by facilitating the visits of insects, and thus 

 by insuring more perfect fertilisation ; the ten- 

 dency to vary in that particular direction is en- 

 hanced as time goes on, and the relation between 

 insect and flower becomes more and more inti- 

 mate. Mr. Henslow's view is different. For 

 him, the insect itself brought about the varia- 

 tion, in the first instance, and the variation has 

 been perpetuated ever since by the repeated 

 action of the insect. Still we do not arrive at the 

 cause of the tendency to vary. The insect is 

 supposed to set this tendency in action, but it 

 can hardly be surmised that it originated the ten- 

 dency. Willows, on Darwinian principles, should 

 be wind-fertilised, but assuredly they are largely, 

 visited by insects, although these insects have not 

 yet, by their weight or other agency, caused any 

 modification of the flower, so far as we know, 

 nor have they — if the Willow be assumed, for 

 the sake of argument, to be a degenerate form 

 of some previously more complex plant — suc- 

 ceeded in arresting its degradation. 



We heartily commend Mr. Henslow's book 

 to the notice of our readers, as containing an 

 excellent summary of our knowledge of the con- 

 formation of flowers as illustrated by their 

 perfect condition, their mode of growth and. 

 development from the initial stages, and their 

 intimate anatomical structure, as well as by 

 their comparative relations. The last sentence 

 in the book we may quote in full, as condensing 

 the author's contention into a sentence : — 



" Having once attracted insects to come regu- 

 larly [for pollen or honey], then a multitudinous- 

 series of differentiations would follow. The 

 corolla would, in all probability, be the first to 

 issue out of the bracts, as being the next whorl 

 to the stamens ; and as a result of stimulus ; other 

 changes already described under the principles 

 of variation, would follow by degrees or in 

 different combinations, but in every case they 

 would be due to the responsive action of the 

 protoplasm, in consequence of the irritations set 

 up by the weights, pressures, thrusts, tensions, 

 &c, of the insect visitors. 



" Thus, then, do I believe the whole floral world 

 to have originated." 



Royal Horticultural Society.— Mr. C. J. 



Ghahame, Assistant Secretary, sends us the following 

 announcement: — "By direction of the Marquis of 

 Salisbury, Sir James Fergusson, Bart., M.P., writes 

 to inform the Royal Horticultural Society that his 

 Lordship has heard from the Austro-Hungarian 



