12 
Nature Portraits 
present time and that one has only to 
look to see what that use is. People 
often look at the little things and miss 
the big ones. They look for the hairs 
and miss the plant. They see the unusual 
and rare and overlook the common. I 
wish that people might learn to see 
dandelions. 
Having seen a thing of which the 
function is not evident, they assume a 
condition and jump at a conclusion. A 
plant has poison; various creatures eat 
plants ; the creatures are killed by poison ; 
therefore the plant has poison to protect 
itself from the creatures. Now, it may 
even be true that the poison does protect 
the plant, but there is no proof thereby that the poison was produced for 
that purpose. The physiologist may hnd that the poison in the given case 
is merely a waste product of some chemical metabolism, and that the plant 
is fortunate in getting rid of it. If the plant is now and then protected, 
the result may be only an incident. If it should appear that one kind of 
plant, by natural selection, has developed poison in order to protect itself, 
the fact would he spread abroad in book and magazine, but it would not 
be stated that it was one case out of a thousand. The exception is 
enlarged into the rule. People like to write about perfect adaptation of 
By A. Radclyfle Dugmore 
CANARY BIRD 
Singing on a leaf of India-rubber plant 
ANXIOUS FOR HIS TURN 
Field sparrow and a brood away from the nest only a few hours 
Copyright, 1900, by A. Radclyfle Dugmore 
