Flowers and Insects. 8i 



The flower is the result of changed leaves, — the 

 changes which thus tranform the hard green leaf to 

 the delicate white or pink or blue petal, recalling 

 the phenomenal reproductive changes in the ani- 

 mal life. 



The initial pov/er to change resides in the plant 

 or animal. When, through this tendency to vary, 

 a new form of life arises, the conditions into which 

 it is finally born determine whether it shall survive 

 or perish. For instance, suppose a certain kind of 

 insect be born sometimes green in color, some- 

 times brown. Suppose too, that these insects live 

 upon green leaves, and are agreeable to the taste 

 of certain birds. The brown insects would be 

 more quickly detected and would be eaten, the 

 green ones surviving to reproduce their kind, and 

 hand down as an inheritance the tendency to be 

 green. Thus, in time, there might arise a race of 

 insects always green. Thus the conditions under 

 which they lived would determine the color of the 

 race. 



In the same way any variation in the animal or 

 plant which better adapts it to the world into 

 which it is born, through inheritance tends to be- 

 come fixed; and any variation which puts the 

 living thing at a disadvantage to its surroundings is 

 quickly eliminated by the death without offspring 

 of the form so unfortunately endowed. In time of 

 hardship the cattle or deer best able to obtain food 

 and to resist cold, through superior intelligence, or 



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