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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
that the appearance in geological time of the most beautiful or 
sweetly perfumed flowers is also that of the insects which now 
habitually frequent flowers. And as the wind-fertilized precede 
the insect-fertilized flowers in order of geological time, we 
contend that the latter may have been modified out of the 
former. Not unfrequently the same genus of plants contains 
both insect- and wind-fertilized flowers, as in our own common 
ash ( Fraxinus excelsior) which is apetalous, and the species 
naturally abundant in the South of Europe, and now in our or- 
namental shrubberies, which possesses a corolla, and is therefore 
insect-fertilized ( F . ornus ). It is not to be concluded that the 
plants which bear the most beautiful flowers are the most 
highly organized, any more than such specially attractive insects 
as the Lepidoptera are also the highest in point of organization 
and development. Some of the Neuroptera, such as the white 
ants ( Termites ), and many among the Hymenoptera, as bees 
and ants, are more cerebrally developed. We have therefore 
a peculiar aspect of evolution here presented, not necessarily 
towards higher organization, as some people think is imperative 
in the new philosophy, but in the direction of special adaptation 
to each other’s necessities and well-being on the part of two 
groups of organisms having no other connection with each 
other than that of having become mutually adapted to each 
other’s requirements. 
