1876.] 
New Phase of Plant- Life. 
13 
ss 
find that many plants are able to destroy inserts without 
the somewhat elaborate arrangements which we recognise 
in the Drosera and Dioncea — that some plants derive no 
benefit at all from the victims, and that others, advancing a 
step higher, utilise the products of their decaying remains 
as manure. So that plants can benefit by these “ excep- 
tional developments ” before “ powers of digestion have been 
acquired.” Nor, therefore, have any mysterious “influences” 
been required to sustain and increase the successive changes 
in this direction, since we see that they may have been of 
use long before their present point of high elaboration was 
reached. The concluding sentence is worthy of a CaccinL 
The “ paramount objedt of Darwinism ” — or rather we 
might say the sole object — is to elucidate the origin and 
existence of species. The uses or abuses to which it may 
be put — whether by theologians or anti-theologians — are 
independent issues with which the naturalist, as such, is 
not concerned. 
What reply can the advocates of Specialism furnish if 
challenged to point out some good reason why the Drosera 
and the Dioncea should have been chosen for endowment 
with the powers of catching and digesting animal prey ? If 
the objedt were to thin a redundant insedt population, surely 
some more common plant would have better answered the 
purpose than one which, like the Dioncea , appears to be 
dying out. On this subjedt the reviewer quoted remarks : — 
“ Suggesting to us rather their charadter as monstrosities, 
exceptions to the general tendency of nature, which must 
naturally be rare.” This notion is on a level with the theory 
that fossil remains were Insus naturce. “ Monstrosities,” — as 
applied to an entire species, — “ general tendency of Nature,” 
are phrases which betray an utterly unscientific, or rather 
anti-scientific, vein of thought. 
