124 
T kiselton-Dyer. — Morphological Noles. 
power of accommodating its color, in a certain degree, to that of the 
object nearest to it, in order to compensate for the deficiency of its loco- 
motive powers. By their form and color, this insect may pass unobserved 
by those birds, which otherwise would soon extirpate a species so little able 
to elude its pursuers, and this juicy little Mesembryanthemum may 
generally escape the notice of cattle and wild animals.’ 
Burchell was clearly on the track on which Darwin reached the goal. 
But the time had not come for emancipation from the old teleology. This, 
however, in no respect detracts from the merit or value of his work. For, 
as Huxley has pointed out 1 , the facts of the old teleology are immediately 
transferable to Darwinism, which simply supplies them with a natural in 
place of a supernatural explanation. 
In another passage (vol. i, p. 226), Burchell gets a clear grip of the 
equilibrium in Nature at which the struggle for existence ultimately 
arrives. An immediate deduction from this is the utility of specific or at 
any rate of adaptive characters. 
* When we permit ourselves to contemplate the great designs of the 
creation, all our boasted knowledge of nature appears only as the ideas and 
the knowledge of children. Too intent on some little parts of the edifice, 
we often remain totally ignorant of the proportions, and perfect symmetry of 
the whole. In the wide system of created objects, nothing is wanting, nothing 
is superfluous : the smallest weed or insect is as indispensably necessary to 
the general good, as the largest object we behold. Each has its peculiar 
part to perform, conducive ultimately to the well-being of all. Nothing 
more bespeaks a littleness of mind, and a narrowness of ideas, than the 
admiring of a production of Nature, merely for its magnitude, or the 
despising of one, merely for its minuteness : nothing more erroneous 
than to regard as useless, all that does not visibly tend to the benefit 
of man l 
In a note to the former passage Burchell gives the name M. tur- 
biniforme to a new species of Mesembryanthemum. I have little doubt 
that this is the one which he describes in the text. He had, however, 
apparently been anticipated by Thunberg (see Harvey and Sonder, Flora 
Capensis, vol. ii, p. 393). Till recently no one seems to have collected 
it since Burchell, nor as far as I know has it been seen in cultivation in 
Europe, and it is represented in no published figure. 
In 1902 Mr. N. S. Pillans of Rosedale, Rosebank, Cape Colony, 
a most generous and indefatigable correspondent of Kew, sent both living 
plants and seeds (which readily germinated) to the Royal Botanic Gardens. 
The accompanying excellent illustration (Plate VII) is reproduced from 
a photograph by Mr. E. J. Wallis. The pot was eight inches in diameter 
and the illustration is therefore slightly less than life-size. Amongst the 
See Life and Letters, i, 457. 
