ALPINE FLOWERS 17 



excelled in fascination by the delicate blue flowers of the 

 Soldanellas, like little fringed foolscaps, by the brilliant 

 little red and purple Alpine snap-dragon, and by the 

 cushion-forming growths of saxifrages and other minute 

 plants which encrust the rocks and bear, closely set in 

 their compact, green, velvet-like foliage, tiny flowers as 

 brilliant as gems. A ruby-red one amongst these is " the 

 stalkless bladder-wort " {Silene acaulis), having no more 

 resemblance at first sight to the somewhat ramshackle 

 bladder-wort of our fields than a fairy has to a fish- 

 wife. There are many others of these cushion-forming, 

 diminutive plants, with white, blue, yellow, and pink florets. 

 Examined with a good pocket lens, they reveal unex- 

 pected beauties of detail — so graceful and harmonious 

 that one wonders that no one has made carefully coloured 

 pictures of them of ten times the size of nature, and 

 published them for all the world to enjoy. Busily 

 moving within their charmed circles we see, with our 

 lens, minute insects which, attracted by the tioney, are 

 carrying the pollen of one flower to another, and effecting 

 for these little flowers what bees and moths do for the 

 larger species. 



Thus we are reminded that all this loveliness, this 

 exquisite beauty, is the work of natural selection — the 

 result of the survival of favourable variations in the 

 struggle for existence. These minute symmetrical forms, 

 this wax-like texture, these marvellous rows of coloured, 

 enamel-like encrustation, have been selected from almost 

 endless and limitless possible variations, and have been 

 accumulated and maintained there as they are in all their 

 beauty, by survival of the fittest — by natural sekction. 

 All beauty of living things, it seems, is due to Nature's 

 selection, and not only all beauty of colour and form, but 

 that beauty of behaviour and excellence of inner quality 

 which we call "goodness." The fittest, that which has 



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