THEVOICEOFTHEDESERT "j^g 



grows from a large tuberous root and flourished wonder- 

 fully last summer after it had been transplanted to my 

 little wild garden. 



It produced abundant seed. Yet, though I tried various 

 tricks, not one seed would grow during the winter. Finally 

 I put some in a refrigerator for two months and planted 

 one after it had been permitted to enjoy an artificial hi- 

 bernation. Not only did it come up promptly, but it seems 

 to be healthy and promises well for another summer. Per- 

 haps all it needed was the assurance that a winter had 

 passed and that it could therefore count upon six or eight 

 months to get a good start. 

 \/ All these, I recognize, will seem very mild amusements 

 to some. But there is no accounting for tastes and I greatly 

 prefer them to many of the others which most of my fel- 

 lows choose. At least they serve to remind me how wrong 

 those early romantics were when they feared that knowl- 

 edge would destroy that "sense of wonder" they cherished 

 as though it were a very fragile thing. The wax coat over 

 my coral bean "explains" why it will not grow in nature 

 until a year or two has passed. But what will explain the 

 explanation? 



The more one comes to understand the mechanisms, the 

 more amazing becomes the fact that they exist. And one 

 must be very easily satisfied if one is satisfied to be told 

 that they "evolved," With every passing year it becomes 

 more difficult to understand why or how evolution operates. 

 Fact after new fact proves that the whole process is much 

 more complicated than Darwin imagined, and that the 

 great mystery is not that changing conditions called for 

 new adaptations but that the power to respond to the de- 

 mands in certain ways, but not in others, was potential in 



