55 3 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



procure that he finally lost a whole stock of the finest sorts. A 

 cultivator of Cyclamens met with the same result, so he always kept 

 a number of " weedy " plants, as he called them, for they set seed 

 abundantly by self-fertilization. These he then crossed and so kept 

 up his supply of plants of marketable value. 



Lastly, what is it which enables flowers to change in the numerous 

 ways mentioned above ? First, we must acknowledge Variability, 

 or the ability to vary in all organic beings. This is called into 

 play by the direct action of changed conditions of life. Then 

 we must recognize a Directivity in life which responds to the new 

 influences. This it does by directing the physical lifeless forces in 

 such a way as to move the physical lifeless matter derived from 

 food, with which life then builds up cells, tissues, and organs for 

 the definite purposes required respectively. 



In the case of flowers we cannot say for certain which came first, 

 adaptations for self-fertilization or for the agency of the wind. 

 Gymnosperms seem to incline to the latter as the primeval condition, 

 the flowers being of separate sexes. 



If that be the case, the adaptations to insects have been acquired 

 later, under the Directivity of Life. 



Lastly, if flowers degenerate in the absence of insects or from 

 other causes, they re-adapt themselves to secure self-fertilization, 

 as in the case of cleistogamy, or else are pollinated by the wind, as 

 in so many of the Incompletae. 



How Life came to possess this Directivity, or, as Sir Oliver Lodge 

 expresses it, to be a " Director of Forces," we know not, and ap- 

 parently it is as scientifically undiscoverable as the Origin of Life 

 itself. 



