THE DANGERS OF NATURE STUDY 37 



teacher or writer must be conscious of utter ignorance in 

 reference to the matter, or is singularly self-deluded. 



The "nature fakir" is the prince of nature explainers. 

 Even if his observations are to be relied upon, which is far 

 from true in every case, his explanations are usually beyond 

 all reason. Especially deceptive is the explanation that 

 involves attributing to plants and to the lower animals the 

 consciousness, and motives, and methods of human beings. 

 More or less of this idea is implied in the terminology we 

 use, for we have developed no other for common use; but 

 it is not used with the deliberate intention of attributing 

 human powers to low organisms. The spines on a cactus 

 are very serviceable in protecting it from grazing animals, 

 but to teach that the cactus invented spines to use for this 

 purpose is to teach an untruth. In this case it happens 

 that the cactus grows chiefly where there are no grazing 

 animals to molest it, and that its spines were produced of 

 necessity and not from choice; and this may be taken as a 

 fair sample of all the wonderful and deliberate " inven- 

 tions" of plants. 



There is an opinion current that everything in nature 

 is perfectly adapted to its surroundings, and perhaps this 

 belief explains the feeling of compulsion to explain. 

 Evidently many have not thoughtfully considered what 

 perfect adaptation would mean. It would mean absolute 

 stagnation; while lack of adaptation means progress. 

 Plants and animals are doing as well as possible under the 

 circumstances in which they are placed, but in general they 

 are changing and are far from being perfectly adapted to 

 environment. In fact the whole question of adaptation is 

 to-day an open one among biologists and no weaker point 



