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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLIII 



effected by cleistogamic degradation, the benefits of as- 

 sured crossing resulting from the combined structural 

 and physiological differentiation characteristic of heter- 

 ogony, and the probability that complete sex-separation 

 "did not commence and was not completed for the sake 

 of the advantages to be gained from cross-fertilization" 

 —but has rather to do with the general problem of divi- 

 sion of labor. 



His manner of presenting conclusions is at once inter- 

 esting, convincing and charming. Egotism abounds in 

 his writings; but the "I" and the "my" are not those 

 of the man thinking in first-person pronouns, but of 

 one unwilling to speak in a cathedratic manner and 

 careful to state even obvious conclusions as merely the 

 results to which he as an individual had been unavoidably 

 led. He wrestled with thought synonymy even more 

 earnestly than men now do with that of species ; and, for 

 instance, by his use of the word ' ' fertilization, ' ' not infre- 

 quently compels the reader to take his perfectly unesca- 

 paltlo meaning broadly and not too literally; and his in- 

 ability to find better words to express the significance of 

 floral structures than "adaptation" and "contrivance," 

 reveals the deep basic idea of teleologic causation that 

 the human mind has embodied in the machinery for utter- 

 ing linn inn thought. His phraseology is often aphoristic. 

 For instance: "No one will understand the final cause of 

 the structure of many flowers without attending to this 

 point" [resultant crossing] ; "Who would have been bold 

 enough to surmise that the propagation of a species 

 should have depended on so complex, so apparently arti- 

 ficial, and yet so admirable an arrangement?" [as that 

 in Catasetum]; "A fortunate accident for the plants" 

 [if the detention of moths in securing Orchis nectar, long 

 enough for the pollinia to harden on to them,were acci- 

 dental] ; "Nature abhors perpetual self-fertilization"; 

 <k Belief that flowers of any plant are habitually fertilized 

 m the bud, or are perpetually self-fertilized, is a most 



