370 DESIGN IN NATURE 



light they close the aperture of the flower, and present only their brownish-green outsides to view, which, moreover, 

 are thrown into numerous wrinkles. Thus, by the morning's light the flower has all the appearance of being faded. 

 It has no smell, and the honey is covered over by the petals. So it remains all day. Towards evening, however, 

 everything is changed. The 'petals unfold themselves, by eight o'clock the flower is as fragrant as before, the 

 second set of stamens have rapidly grown, their anthers are open, and the pollen again exposed. By mornmg the 

 plant is again asleep, the anthers are shrivelled, the scent has ceased, and the petals roll up as before. The third 

 evening again the same process, but this time it is the pistil which grows, and the long spiral stigma on the third 

 evening takes the position which on the previous two has been occupied by the anthers, and can hardly fail to be 

 dusted by the moths with pollen brought from another flower." 



The Nottingham catchfly is remarkable for its nocturnal habits and its deUcate adjustments to ensure fertihsa- 

 tion. It produces honey and scent and a fair exterior as lures to certain moths ; the upper part of its flowering 

 stem is viscid to prevent the approach of ants and creeping insects ; the different parts of the flower mature at 

 various and suitable periods ; it is a centre of attraction during the night, but closes up and shrivels during the day ; 

 it wakes during the night and sleeps during the day, and comports itself generally as an inteUigent agent. It is 

 not possible to conceive of the Nottingham catchfly as the product of natural selection and variation, however 

 gradual and however long continued. The plant in every direction is a crowning example of design. The plant 

 not only develops its several parts to meet certain requirements at certain times, but it adapts itself to the visits 

 of certain moths at night, and excludes other insects whose visits are not desirable. 



Dr. Criiger furnishes a highly illustrative example of the mode of fertilisation of a tropical orchid— one of the 

 Coryanthes. " He found that the labellum or under hp of this orchid is hollowed into a great bucket, in which drops 

 of almost pure water continually fall from two secreting horns which stand above it, and when the bucket is half 

 full the water overflows by a spout on one side. The bare part of the labellum stands in the bucket, and is itself 

 hollowed out into a sort of chamber with two lateral entrances ; within this chamber are curious fleshy ridges. The 

 most ingenious man, if he had not witnessed what takes place, could never have imagined what purpose all these 

 parts serve. But Dr. Criiger saw crowds of large humble-bees visiting the gigantic flowers of this orchid, not in 

 order to suck nectar, but to gnaw off the ridges within the chamber above the bucket. In doing this they fre- 

 quently pushed each other into the bucket, and, their wings being thus wetted, they could not fly away, but were 

 compelled to crawl through the passage formed by the spout or overflow. Dr. Criiger saw a continual procession 

 of bees thus crawling out of their involuntary bath. The passage is narrow, and is roofed in by the column ; so 

 that a bee, in forcing its way out, first rubs its back against the viscid stigma, then against the viscid glands of the 

 pollen-masses. The pollen-masses are thus glued to the back of the bees which first happen to crawl out through 

 the passage of a lately expanded flower, and are thus carried away. "When the bee, thus provided, flies to another 

 flower, or to the same flower a second time, and is pushed by his comrades into the bucket and then crawls out by 

 the passage, the pollen-masses necessarily come first in contact with the viscid stigma and adhere to it, and so the 

 flower is fertilised." 



Mr. Belt in his " Naturahst of Nicaragua " shows how the bird may be made to do duty in fertihsation. " A 

 chmbing plant {Marcgravia nepenthoides) expands its flowers in a circle, and these hang down like inverted candelabra. 

 From the centre of the floral circle and underneath the flowers there is suspended a number of pitchers, which are 

 full of nectar when the flowers are ripe. The honey attracts insects and the latter attract birds, especially humming- 

 birds. Before the latter can get at the honey-bearing pitchers, their backs must brush the open flowers out of which 

 the pollen is ready to be shed, and in this manner they convey it from plant to plant and cross the flowers." 



In the examples cited of cross-fertilisation, such an amount of ingenuity and adaptation of means to ends is 

 displayed as to leave no reasonable doubt in the mind of any reflective person that intelligence is to be traced either 

 to the plant or to the Creator of the plant. The situation is enhanced when the visits of the moths and birds are 

 taken into account. These visits show clearly enough that the actions of both plants and animals are controlled, 

 and that the Creator maintains His hold upon plants and animals in their various and mutual relations. 



Mr. Baildon states the case very fairly in the following words : " The more one reflects upon the phenomena of 

 life, especially of vegetable life, the more is one convinced that they can only be caused and directed either by a 

 consciousness existing in the organism itself and controlling its conduct, or some pervasive consciousness without 

 the organism which ordains for it its actions, either of which hypotheses seems to imply some pre-existing intelli- 

 gence ; for Nature must be a power even more miraculous than we esteem her, if she be either herself wise without 

 thought and prudent without knowledge, or capable of endowing her productions with a consciousness, wisdom, 

 and foresight of which she herself is innocent." ^ 



Various other examples of design in plants might be given, but sufficient have been quoted for my present purpose. 



1 "The Spirit of Nature," by Henry Bellyse liaildon, B.A. (Cantab.). London, 1880, pp. 161, 162. 



