102 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
has been sufficiently directed to this point to affirm it 
as a universal law. 
The presence of bright coloring in connection with the 
reproductive process is a widely diffused and remarkable 
phenomenon in the vegetable kingdom ; whether apper- 
taining to the male element before fertilisation, to the sub- 
sidiary structures associated with the female organ, or to 
the organ which results from that process ; and the cause 
of this coloring opens out a very interesting problem in 
vegetable biology. No doubt in the example which is 
most familiar to us, the bright coloring of petals, we have 
an easy explanation in most cases, in the attraction of 
insects to assist in the act of pollination. But this 
explanation is clearly not applicable in all instances. 
How, for example, does it explain the bright scarlet of the 
styles of the hazel? or the beautiful rose-color of the 
opening inflorescence of the larch ? or the bright pigment 
of the cone-scales of the Scotch fir? All these plants are 
fertilised exclusively by the agency of the wind, and in 
none of them can we have recourse to the theory of 
survival, since, on any hypothesis of evolution, both 
Corylacee and Conifers must be regarded as archaic forms 
anterior in development to those orders of Angiosperms 
which have a brightly colored perianth. Or, to take 
organisms still lower in the evolutionary scale :—how are 
we to account for the brilliant red of the sporange of 
Sphagnum ? or the bright coloring of the modified leaves 
which surround the male inflorescence in the same group 
of mosses? or the equally brilliant coloring of the 
** slobule’’ or antherid in the Characez? or the brilliant 
searlet of species of Peziza or Boletus? These problems I 
leave with you without any attempt at solution. 
That the particles of protoplasm should be in a state of 
peculiar molecular activity at the period when any process 
