THE POLLINA TION OF THE PRIMROSE 85 
So, too, assuming Darwin to have demonstrated the prepotency 
of foreign pollen, it would hardly justify the statement that 
“ heterostyled flowers stand in the reciprocal relation of different 
sexes to each other,” and still less Hermann Muller’s sweeping 
generalisation — which is not Darwin’s — that it was “ proved 
that in heterostyled plants the regular crossing of separate 
individuals was absolutely essential for the maintenance of the 
species.” 
At the same time I cannot help thinking that Mr. Bell was 
guilty of an equally exaggerated phraseology when he entitled 
his book “ The Primrose and Darwinism,” for the exact func- 
tions of heterostyled dowers has but little decisive bearing upon 
what is ordinarily understood by the term “ Darwinism.” Dar- 
winism does not ordinarily signify the views that Darwin held 
on this or that particular question in biology, but the distinctive 
view of the origin of species by natural selection. This theory 
will remain where it was, whether the Primrose be demonstrated 
to be self-pollinated, wind-pollinated, insect-pollinated, or some- 
times one and sometimes the other. 
Even to the pre- Darwinian special creationist or altruistic 
teleologist, if any biologist survives who can be so classified, 
structure has a definite relation to function. Darwin merely 
modified this belief, the elementary result of all anatomical and 
physiological study, by bringing abundant and varied evidence 
and inference to show that the adaptation is selfish not altruistic, 
that every structure is of use to its possessor or was of use to 
its ancestors. This general biological principle, the new tele- 
ology, as it has been termed, is now so universally recognised as 
demonstrated truth that biologists see no danger in assuming it 
as a starting point for deductive reasoning. We may, then, 
probably assert with confidence that the almost universal — it is 
not universal — occurrence of a definite reciprocal dimorphism in 
the position of anthers and stigma in Primula acaulis corresponds 
to some definite physiological adaptation. Even if the prepo- 
tency of foreign pollen were not demonstrated, we should infer 
that reciprocal cross-pollination by insects (parts of whose bodies 
would, on visiting the two forms in succession, come in contact 
at one time with anther and at another with stigma) is at least 
lavoured. On the other hand, if prepotency be demonstrated it 
does not prove universal cross-pollination, it does not exclude 
occasional, possibly frequent, “illegitimate,” or, as I would call 
them, “ homogenous,” pollinations. We may, in fact, carry our 
deductive reasoning still farther in the direction of admitting 
such pollinations. Though the eye appears a clearly entomo- 
philous adaptation, the primrose is otherwise self-coloured, very 
pale, and somewhat more scented, I think, at dusk or by night. 
Self-coloured flowers, such as Malva rottindi folia, though their 
coloured corollas suggest at least occasional entomophilous polli- 
nation, are generally either synacmic, or in other ways self-fertile 
and perhaps self-fertilising. Whether there are, or are not. 
