86 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 
nurses, luck and chance, it follows that an enor- 
mous proportion of the offspring will die. 
By investigating the blossoms of the oak, horse- 
chestnut, and maple, we see that these trees, ages 
ago, bore very many seeds, which must-have re- 
ceived but a scant provision apiece wherewith to 
start themselves in life. Under these circumstances, 
the majority of the seedlings would die young, giv- 
ing the parent-plant the expense of putting an 
enormous family out into the world, and all to lit- 
tle purpose. To-day, evolution is teaching them 
‘*a more excellent way. ”’ 
‘“‘It is a fatal habit,’’ says Grant Allen, ‘‘to 
picture evolution to one’s self as a closed chapter. 
We should think of it rather as a chapter that 
goes on writing itself for ever. Our fields are full 
of degenerate flowers which retain some memorial 
of their old estate, pointing backward, like the 
fasces of the Byzantine emperors, to the past 
glories of their race in earlier times.” They are 
also full of plants which bear somewhere about 
them half-obliterated traces which tell the story of 
their progress from a lower to a higher form of 
life. 
