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 Chapter 7 - Recursion

True/False (10)

1. The program stack stores activation records chronologically.

Answer: true

2. Recursive method calls create multiple copies of the method in memory.

Answer: false

3. A recursive method uses less memory than an iterative method.

Answer: false

4. You can use a recurrence relation to determine the performance of a recursive method.

Answer: true

5. Recursive methods do not return a value.

Answer: false

6. Activation records for recursive methods are the same as activation records for non-recursive
methods.

Answer: true

7. You should always trace a recursive method to ensure it is correct.

Answer: false

8. An iterative solution to the Towers of Hanoi problem moves fewer disks than the recursive
solution.

Answer: false

9. Converting a tail-recursive method to an iterative method is usually a straightforward process.

Answer: true

10. You can replace recursion with iteration by simulating the program stack.

Answer: true
Short Answer (7)

1. Explain why the recursive Fibonacci program is so inefficient.

Answer: Each Fibonacci number is calculated multiple times. The larger the Fibonacci sequence, the
more redundant calculations are performed.

2. What is the value returned from the following method when it is called with the value 9?

int mystery (int n)

{
if (n < 1)
return 0;
else if (n % 2 == 0)
return mystery(n-1);
else return 1 + mystery(n-1);
}

Answer: 5

3. What does the following method compute?

int mystery (int n)

{
if (n < 1)
return 0;
else if (n % 2 == 0)
return mystery(n-1);
else return 1 + mystery(n-1);
}

Answer: The ceiling function of n / 2. Or the count of odd numbers up to n.

4. What is the value returned from the following method when it is called with the value 5?

int mystery(int x, int y)

{
if (y == 0)
return 1;
if (y == 1)
return x;
return x * mystery(x, y-1);
}

Answer: 32
5. What does the following method compute?

int mystery(int x, int y)

{
if (y == 0)
return 1;
if (y == 1)
return x;
return x * mystery(x, y-1);
}

Answer: It computes xy.

6. What does the following method compute?

boolean mystery(int[] x, int b, int c)

{
if (b > 0)
if (x[b-1] == c)
return true;
else
return mystery(x, b-1, c);
return false;
}

Answer: It returns true if the value of c is in the array x, otherwise it returns false. The variable b is
the size of the array x.

7. What does the following method compute?

int mystery(int[] x, int b, int c)

{
if (b > 0)
if (x[b-1] == c)
return b-1;
else
return mystery(x, b-1, c);
return -1;
}

Answer: It searches an array for the value of c. It returns the array index if the value is found, -1 if it
is not found. The variable b is the size of the array x.
Multiple Choice (25) WARNING: CORRECT ANSWERS ARE IN THE SAME POSITION AND TAGGED
WITH **. YOU SHOULD RANDOMIZE THE LOCATION OF THE CORRECT ANSWERS IN YOUR EXAM.

1. A method that calls itself is called a

a. recursive method **
b. base method
c. iterative method
d. dynamic method

2. The condition when a recursive method does not satisfy a base case it is called
a. infinite recursion **
b. finite recursion
c. iterative recursion
d. baseless recursion

3. When too many recursive calls are made creating more activation records than the allocated
program memory can handle, what kind of error occurs?
a. stack overflow **
b. activation record overflow
c. recursive overflow
d. infinite recursion

4. What happens when a recursive method does not reach the base case?
a. the program crashes
b. a stack overflow occurs
c. both a & b **
d. none of the above

5. Recursion can be used to solve problems like

a. processing linked chains
b. processing arrays
c. sorting
d. all of the above **

6. Recursive methods
a. are useful when each recursive all is a solution to a smaller, identical problem **
b. do not use an if-statement
c. are not useful in programming
 d. all of the above

7. Recursive methods need a(n)

a. base case **
b. for loop
c. trace
d. all of the above

8. What question should you keep in mind when debugging a recursive method?
a. Is there at least one recursive call?
b. Did you consider all possible cases?
c. Does the method contain a statement to test an input value and leads to different
cases?
d. All of the above. **

9. What question should you keep in mind when debugging a recursive method?
a. Does each base case produce a result that is correct for that case?
b. are there enough base cases?
c. Is at least one of the cases a base case that has no recursive call?
d. All of the above. **

10. What question should you keep in mind when debugging a recursive method?
a. If the method returns a value, does each of the cases return a value? **
b. Should a for-loop be included in the method?
c. Are the activation records correct?
d. All of the above.

11. A recursive method that processes a chain of linked nodes

a. uses the first node in the chain **
b. uses the last node in the chain
c. divides the chain in half placing the middle node in the left chain
d. divides the chain in half placing the middle node in the right chain

12. Traversing a chain of linked nodes

a. is easier to do recursively than iteratively **
b. is easier to do iteratively than recursively
c. is impossible to do recursively
d. is easy to do iteratively

13. To determine the efficiency of a recursive method you need to solve a(n)
a. recurrence relation **
b. recursive relation
 c. quadratic equation
d. base case

14. The efficiency for recursively traversing a chain of linked nodes is

a. O(n) **
b. O(1)
c. O(n2)
d. it cannot be proven

15. The efficiency for recursively calculating xn is

a. O(log n) **
b. O(n log n)
c. O(n)
d. O(n2)

16. The efficiency for solving the Towers of Hanoi problem recursively is
a. O(2n) **
b. O(n2)
c. O(n)
d. O(log n)

17. The rate of growth for the Towers of Hanoi problem as the number of disks increases is
a. exponential **
b. quadratic
c. linear
d. constant

18. When the last action in a recursive method is a recursive call, it is called
a. tail recursion **
b. final recursion
c. delayed recursion
d. latent recursion

19. When method X calls method Y, method Y calls method Z, and method Z calls method X, this is
called
a. indirect recursion **
b. mutual recursion
c. tail recursion
d. an error

20. When method X calls method Y, and method Y calls method X, this is called
a. mutual recursion **
 b. tail recursion
c. associative recursion
d. an error

21. What is the output of the following program when the method is called with 4?

void unknown(int n)
{
System.out.print("?");
if (n > 0)
unknown(n-1);
}

a. ????? **
b. ????
c. ???
d. none of the above

22. What is the output of the following program when the method is called with 4?

void unknown(int n)
{
if (n > 0)
{
System.out.print("?");
unknown(n-1);
}
}

a. ???? **
b. ?????
c. ???
d. none of the above

23. What is the output of the following program when the method is called with 4?

void unknown(int n)
{
if (n > 0)
unknown(n-1);
System.out.print("?");
}
 a. ????? **
b. ????
c. ???
d. none of the above

24. How many recursive calls will be made if the following method is called with 6?

void greeting(int n)
{
System.out.println("Hello!");
greeting(n-1);
}

a. infinitely **
b. 7
c. 6
d. 5

25. How many recursive calls will be made if the following method is called with 6?

void greeting(int n)
{
if (n > 0)
{
System.out.println("Hello!");
greeting(n+1);
}
}

a. infinitely **
b. 7
c. 6
d. 5
Other documents randomly have
different content
the sap, so as to secure it from the attacks of rodents, who too
frequently appropriate to themselves the food intended by plants for
other purposes. If you examine the tuber before the arum has
blossomed, you will find it large and solid; but if you dig it up in the
autumn after the seeds have ripened, you will see that it is flaccid
and drained; all its starches and other contents have gone to make
up the flower, the fruit, and the stalk which bore them. But the tuber
has a further protection against enemies besides its deep
underground position. It contains an acrid juice like that of the
leaves, which sufficiently guards it against four-footed depredators.
Man, however, that most persistent of persecutors, has found out a
way to separate the juice from the starch; and in St. Helena the big
white arum is cultivated as a food-plant, and yields the meal in
common use among the inhabitants.

When the arum has laid by enough starch to make a flower it begins
to send up a tall stalk, on the top of which grows the curious hooded
blossom known to be one of the earliest forms still surviving upon
earth. But now its object is to attract, not to repel, the animal world;
for it is an insect-fertilised flower, and it requires the aid of small flies
to carry the pollen from blossom to blossom. For this purpose it has
a purple sheath around its head of flowers and a tall spike on which
they are arranged in two clusters, the male blossoms above and the
female below. This spike is bright yellow in the cultivated species.
The fertilisation is one of the most interesting episodes in all nature,
but it would take too long to describe here in full. The flies go from
one arum to another, attracted by the colour, in search of pollen; and
the pistils, or female flowers, ripen first. Then the pollen falls from
the stamens or male flowers on the bodies of the flies, and dusts
them all over with yellow powder. The insects, when once they have
entered, are imprisoned until the pollen is ready to drop, by means
of several little hairs, pointing downwards, and preventing their exit
on the principle of an eel-trap or lobster-pot. But as soon as the
pollen is discharged the hairs wither away, and then the flies are free
to visit a second arum. Here they carry the fertilising dust with which
they are covered to the ripe pistils, and so enable them to set their
seed; but, instead of getting away again as soon as they have eaten
their fill, they are once more imprisoned by the lobster-pot hairs,
and dusted with a second dose of pollen, which they carry away in
turn to a third blossom.

As soon as the pistils have been impregnated, the fruits begin to set.
Here they are, on their tall spike, whose enclosing sheath has now
withered away, while the top is at this moment slowly dwindling, so
that only the cluster of berries at its base will finally remain. The
berries will swell and grow soft, till in autumn they become a
beautiful scarlet cluster of living coral. Then once more their object
will be to attract the animal world, this time in the shape of field-
mice, squirrels, and small birds; but with a more treacherous intent.
For though the berries are beautiful and palatable enough they are
deadly poison. The robins or small rodents which eat them, attracted
by their bright colours and pleasant taste, not only aid in dispersing
them, but also die after swallowing them, and become huge manure
heaps for the growth of the young plant. So the whole cycle of arum
existence begins afresh, and there is hardly a plant in the field
around me which has not a history as strange as this one.
 IX.

BERRIES AND BERRIES.

This little chine, opening toward the sea through the blue lias cliffs,
has been worn to its present pretty gorge-like depth by the slow
action of its tiny stream—a mere thread of water in fine weather,
that trickles down its centre in a series of mossy cascades to the
shingly beach below. Its sides are overgrown by brambles and other
prickly brushwood, which form in places a matted and impenetrable
mass: for it is the habit of all plants protected by the defensive
armour of spines or thorns to cluster together in serried ranks,
through which cattle or other intrusive animals cannot break.
Amongst them, near the down above, I have just lighted upon a rare
plant for Southern Britain—a wild raspberry-bush in full fruit.
Raspberries are common enough in Scotland among heaps of stones
on the windiest hillsides; but the south of England is too warm and
sickly for their robust tastes, and they can only be found here in a
few bleak spots like the stony edges of this weather-beaten down
above the chine. The fruit itself is quite as good as the garden
variety, for cultivation has added little to the native virtues of the
raspberry. Good old Izaak Walton is not ashamed to quote a certain
quaint saying of one Dr. Boteler concerning strawberries, and so I
suppose I need not be afraid to quote it after him. 'Doubtless,' said
the Doctor, 'God could have made a better berry, but doubtless also
God never did.' Nevertheless, if you try the raspberry, picked fresh,
with plenty of good country cream, you must allow that it runs its
sister fruit a neck-and-neck race.

To compare the structure of a raspberry with that of a strawberry is

a very instructive botanical study. It shows how similar causes may
produce the same gross result in singularly different ways. Both are
roses by family, and both have flowers essentially similar to that of
the common dog-rose. But even in plants where the flowers are
alike, the fruits often differ conspicuously, because fresh principles
come into play for the dispersion and safe germination of the seed.
This makes the study of fruits the most complicated part in the
unravelling of plant life. After the strawberry has blossomed, the
pulpy receptacle on which it bore its green fruitlets begins to swell
and redden, till at length it grows into an edible berry, dotted with
little yellow nuts, containing each a single seed. But in the raspberry
it is the separate fruitlets themselves which grow soft and bright-
coloured, while the receptacle remains white and tasteless, forming
the 'hull' which we pull off from the berry when we are going to eat
it. Thus the part of the raspberry which we throw away answers to
the part of the strawberry which we eat. Only, in the raspberry the
separate fruitlets are all crowded close together into a single united
mass, while in the strawberry they are scattered about loosely, and
embedded in the soft flesh of the receptacle. The blackberry is
another close relative; but in its fruit the little pulpy fruitlets cling to
the receptacle, so that we pick and eat them both together; whereas
in the raspberry the receptacle pulls out easily, and leaves a thimble-
shaped hollow in the middle of the berry. Each of these little
peculiarities has a special meaning of its own in the history of the
different plants.

Yet the main object attained by all is in the end precisely similar.
Strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries all belong to the class of
attractive fruits. They survive in virtue of the attention paid to them
by birds and small animals. Just as the wild strawberry which I
picked in the hedgerow the other day procures the dispersion of its
hard and indigestible fruitlets by getting them eaten together with
the pulpy receptacle, so does the raspberry procure the dispersion of
its soft and sugary fruitlets by getting them eaten all by themselves.
While the strawberry fruitlets retain throughout their dry outer
coating, in those of the raspberry the external covering becomes
fleshy and red, but the inner seed has, notwithstanding, a still
harder shell than the tiny nuts of the strawberry. Now, this is the
secret of nine fruits out of ten. They are really nuts, which clothe
themselves in an outer tunic of sweet and beautifully coloured pulp.
The pulp, as it were, the plant gives in, as an inducement to the
friendly bird to swallow its seed; but the seed itself it protects by a
hard stone or shell, and often by poisonous or bitter juices within.
We see this arrangement very conspicuously in a plum, or still better
in a mango; though it is really just as evident in the raspberry,
where the smaller size renders it less conspicuous to human sight.

It is a curious fact about the rose family that they have a very
marked tendency to produce such fleshy fruits, instead of the mere
dry seed-vessels of ordinary plants, which are named fruits only by
botanical courtesy. For example, we owe to this single family the
peach, plum, apricot, cherry, damson, pear, apple, medlar, and
quince, all of them cultivated in gardens or orchards for their fruits.
The minor group known by the poetical name of Dryads, alone
supplies us with the strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, and dewberry.
Even the wilder kinds, refused as food by man, produce berries well
known to our winter birds—the haw, rose-hip, sloe, bird-cherry, and
rowan. On the other hand, the whole tribe numbers but a single
thoroughgoing nut—the almond; and even this nut, always
somewhat soft-shelled and inclined to pulpiness, has produced by a
'sport' the wholly fruit-like nectarine. The odd thing about the rose
tribe, however, is this: that the pulpy tendency shows itself in very
different parts among the various species. In the plum it is the outer
covering of the true fruit which grows soft and coloured: in the apple
it is a swollen mass of the fruit-stalk surrounding the ovules: in the
rose-hip it is the hollowed receptacle: and in the strawberry it is the
same receptacle, bulging out in the opposite direction. Such a
general tendency to display colour and collect sugary juices in so
many diverse parts may be compared to the general bulbous
tendency of the tiger-lily or the onion, and to the general succulent
tendency of the cactus or the house-leek. In each case, the plant
benefits by it in one form or another; and whichever form happens
to get the start in any particular instance is increased and developed
by natural selection, just as favourable varieties of fruits or flowers
are increased and developed in cultivated species by our own
gardeners.

Sweet juices and bright colours, however, could be of no use to a

plant till there were eyes to see and tongues to taste them. A pulpy
fruit is in itself a mere waste of productive energy to its mother,
unless the pulpiness aids in the dispersion and promotes the welfare
of the young seedlings. Accordingly, we might naturally expect that
there would be no fruit-bearers on the earth until the time when
fruit-eaters, actual or potential, arrived upon the scene: or, to put it
more correctly, both must inevitably have developed simultaneously
and in mutual dependence upon one another. So we find no traces
of succulent fruits even in so late a formation as that of these lias or
cretaceous cliffs. The birds of that day were fierce-toothed
carnivores, devouring the lizards and saurians of the rank low-lying
sea-marshes: the mammals were mostly primæval kangaroos or low
ancestral wombats, gentle herbivores, or savage marsupial wolves,
like the Tasmanian devil of our own times. It is only in the very
modern tertiary period, whose soft muddy deposits have not yet had
time to harden under superincumbent pressure into solid stone, that
we find the earliest traces of the rose family, the greatest fruit-
bearing tribe of our present world. And side by side with them we
find their clever arboreal allies, the ancestral monkeys and squirrels,
the primitive robins, and the yet shadowy forefathers of our modern
fruit-eating parrots. Just as bees and butterflies necessarily trace
back their geological history only to the time of the first honey-
bearing flowers, and just as the honey-bearing flowers in turn trace
back their pedigree only to the date of the rudest and most
unspecialised honey-sucking insects, so are fruits and fruit-eaters
linked together in origin by the inevitable bond of a mutual
dependence. No bee, no honey; and no honey, no bee: so, too, no
fruit, no fruit-bird; and no fruit-bird, no fruit.
 X.

DISTANT RELATIONS.

Behind the old mill, whose overshot wheel, backed by a wall thickly
covered with the young creeping fronds of hart's-tongue ferns, forms
such a picturesque foreground for the view of our little valley, the
mill-stream expands into a small shallow pond, overhung at its
edges by thick-set hazel-bushes and clambering honeysuckle. Of
course it is only dammed back by a mud wall, with sluices for the
miller's water-power; but it has a certain rustic simplicity of its own,
which makes it beautiful to our eyes for all that, in spite of its
utilitarian origin. At the bottom of this shallow pond you may now
see a miracle daily taking place, which but for its commonness we
should regard as an almost incredible marvel. You may there behold
evolution actually illustrating the transformation of life under your
very eyes: you may watch a low type of gill-breathing gristly-boned
fish developing into the highest form of lung-breathing terrestrial
amphibian. Nay, more—you may almost discover the earliest known
ancestor of the whole vertebrate kind, the first cousin of that once
famous ascidian larva, passing through all the upward stages of
existence which finally lead it to assume the shape of a relatively
perfect four-legged animal. For the pond is swarming with fat black
tadpoles, which are just at this moment losing their tails and
developing their legs, on the way to becoming fully formed frogs.

The tadpole and the ascidian larva divide between them the honour
of preserving for us in all its native simplicity the primitive aspect of
the vertebrate type. Beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes have all
descended from an animal whose shape closely resembled that of
these wriggling little black creatures which dart up and down like
imps through the clear water, and raise a cloud of mud above their
heads each time that they bury themselves comfortably in the soft
mud of the bottom. But while the birds and beasts, on the one hand,
have gone on bettering themselves out of all knowledge, and while
the ascidian, on the other hand, in his adult form has dropped back
into an obscure and sedentary life—sans eyes, sans teeth, sans
taste, sans everything—the tadpole alone, at least during its early
days, remains true to the ancestral traditions of the vertebrate
family. When first it emerges from its egg it represents the very most
rudimentary animal with a backbone known to our scientific
teachers. It has a big hammer-looking head, and a set of branching
outside gills, and a short distinct body, and a long semi-transparent
tail. Its backbone is a mere gristly channel, in which lies its spinal
cord. As it grows, it resembles in every particular the ascidian larva,
with which, indeed, Kowalewsky and Professor Ray Lankester have
demonstrated its essential identity. But since a great many people
seem wrongly to imagine that Professor Lankester's opinion on this
matter is in some way at variance with Mr. Darwin's and Dr.
Haeckel's, it may be well to consider what the degeneracy of the
ascidian really means. The fact is, both larval forms—that of the frog
and that of the ascidian—completely agree in the position of their
brains, their gill-slits, their very rudimentary backbones, and their
spinal cords. Moreover, we ourselves and the tadpole agree with the
ascidian in a further most important point, which no invertebrate
animal shares with us; and that is that our eyes grow out of our
brains, instead of being part of our skin, as in insects and cuttle-fish.
This would seem à priori a most inconvenient place for an eye—
inside the brain; but then, as Professor Lankester cleverly suggests,
our common original ancestor, the very earliest vertebrate of all,
must have been a transparent creature, and therefore comparatively
indifferent as to the part of his body in which his eye happened to
be placed. In after ages, however, as vertebrates generally got to
have thicker skulls and tougher skins, the eye-bearing part of the
brain had to grow outward, and so reach the light on the surface of
the body: a thing which actually happens to all birds, beasts, and
reptiles in the course of their embryonic development. So that in this
respect the ascidian larva is nearer to the original type than the
tadpole or any other existing animal.

The ascidian, however, in mature life, has grown degraded and fallen
from his high estate, owing to his bad habit of rooting himself to a
rock and there settling down into a mere sedentary swallower of
passing morsels—a blind, handless, footless, and degenerate thing.
In his later shape he is but a sack fixed to a stone, and with all his
limbs and higher sense-organs so completely atrophied that only his
earlier history allows us to recognise him as a vertebrate by descent
at all. He is in fact a representative of retrogressive development.
The tadpole, on the contrary, goes on swimming about freely, and
keeping the use of its eyes, till at last a pair of hind legs and then a
pair of fore legs begin to bud out from its side, and its tail fades
away, and its gills disappear, and air-breathing lungs take their place,
and it boldly hops on shore a fully evolved tailless amphibian.

There is, however, one interesting question about these two larvæ
which I should much like to solve. The ascidian has only one eye
inside its useless brain, while the tadpole and all other vertebrates
have two from the very first. Now which of us most nearly
represents the old mud-loving vertebrate ancestor in this respect?
Have two original organs coalesced in the young ascidian, or has one
organ split up into a couple with the rest of the class? I think the
latter is the true supposition, and for this reason: In our heads, and
those of all vertebrates, there is a curious cross-connection between
the eyes and the brain, so that the right optic nerve goes to the left
side of the brain and the left optic nerve goes to the right side. In
higher animals, this 'decussation,' as anatomists call it, affects all the
sense-organs except those of smell; but in fishes it only affects the
eyes. Now, as the young ascidian has retained the ancestral position
of his almost useless eye so steadily, it is reasonable to suppose that
he has retained its other peculiarities as well. May we not conclude,
therefore, that the primitive vertebrate had only one brain-eye; but
that afterwards, as this brain-eye grew outward to the surface, it
split up into two, because of the elongated and flattened form of the
head in swimming animals, while its two halves still kept up a
memory of their former union in the cross-connection with the
opposite halves of the brain? If this be so, then we might suppose
that the other organs followed suit, so as to prevent confusion in the
brain between the two sides of the body; while the nose, which
stands in the centre of the face, was under no liability to such error,
and therefore still keeps up its primitive direct arrangement.

It is worth noting, too, that these tadpoles, like all other very low
vertebrates, are mud-haunters; and the most primitive among adult
vertebrates are still cartilaginous mud-fish. Not much is known
geologically about the predecessors of frogs; the tailless amphibians
are late arrivals upon earth, and it may seem curious, therefore, that
they should recall in so many ways the earliest ancestral type. The
reason doubtless is because they are so much given to larval
development. Some ancestors of theirs—primæval newts or
salamanders—must have gone on for countless centuries improving
themselves in their adult shape from age to age, yet bringing all
their young into the world from the egg, as mere mud-fish still, in
much the same state as their unimproved forefathers had done
millions of æons before. Similarly, caterpillars are still all but exact
patterns of the primæval insect, while butterflies are totally different
and far higher creatures. Thus, in spite of adult degeneracy in the
ascidian and adult progress in the frog, both tadpoles preserve for
us very nearly the original form of their earliest backboned ancestor.
Each individual recapitulates in its own person the whole history of
evolution in its race. This is a very lucky thing for biology; since
without these recapitulatory phases we could never have traced the
true lines of descent in many cases. It would be a real misfortune for
science if every frog had been born a typical amphibian, as some
tree-toads actually are, and if every insect had emerged a fully
formed adult, as some aphides very nearly do. Larvæ and embryos
show us the original types of each race; adults show us the total
amount of change produced by progressive or retrogressive
development.
 XI.

AMONG THE HEATHER.

This is the worst year for butterflies that I can remember.

Entomologists all over England are in despair at the total failure of
the insect crop, and have taken to botanising, angling, and other
bad habits, in default of means for pursuing their natural avocation
as beetle-stickers. Last year's heavy rains killed all the mothers as
they emerged from the chrysalis; and so only a few stray eggs have
survived till this summer, when the butterflies they produce will all
be needed to keep up next season's supply. Nevertheless, I have
climbed the highest down in this part of the country to-day, and
come out for an airing among the heather, in the vague hope that I
may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of one or two old
lepidopterous favourites. I am not a butterfly-hunter myself. I have
not the heart to drive pins through the pretty creatures' downy
bodies, or to stifle them with reeking chemicals; though I recognise
the necessity for a hardened class who will perform that useful office
on behalf of science and society, just as I recognise the necessity for
slaughtermen and knackers. But I prefer personally to lie on the
ground at my ease and learn as much about the insect nature as I
can discover from simple inspection of the living subject as it flits
airily from bunch to bunch of bright-coloured flowers.

I suppose even that apocryphal person, the general reader, would be

insulted at being told at this hour of the day that all bright-coloured
flowers are fertilised by the visits of insects, whose attentions they
are specially designed to solicit. Everybody has heard over and over
again that roses, orchids, and columbines have acquired their honey
to allure the friendly bee, their gaudy petals to advertise the honey,
and their divers shapes to ensure the proper fertilisation by the
correct type of insect. But everybody does not know how specifically
certain blossoms have laid themselves out for a particular species of
fly, beetle, or tiny moth. Here on the higher downs, for instance,
most flowers are exceptionally large and brilliant; while all Alpine
climbers must have noticed that the most gorgeous masses of bloom
in Switzerland occur just below the snow-line. The reason is, that
such blossoms must be fertilised by butterflies alone. Bees, their
great rivals in honey-sucking, frequent only the lower meadows and
slopes, where flowers are many and small: they seldom venture far
from the hive or the nest among the high peaks and chilly nooks
where we find those great patches of blue gentian or purple
anemone, which hang like monstrous breadths of tapestry upon the
mountain sides. This heather here, now fully opening in the warmer
sun of the southern counties—it is still but in the bud among the
Scotch hills, I doubt not—specially lays itself out for the bumblebee,
and its masses form about his highest pasture-grounds; but the
butterflies—insect vagrants that they are—have no fixed home, and
they therefore stray far above the level at which bee-blossoms
altogether cease to grow. Now, the butterfly differs greatly from the
bee in his mode of honey-hunting; he does not bustle about in a
business-like manner from one buttercup or dead-nettle to its
nearest fellow; but he flits joyously, like a sauntering straggler that
he is, from a great patch of colour here to another great patch at a
distance, whose gleam happens to strike his roving eye by its size
and brilliancy. Hence, as that indefatigable observer, Dr. Hermann
Müller, has noticed, all Alpine or hill-top flowers have very large and
conspicuous blossoms, generally grouped together in big clusters so
as to catch a passing glance of the butterfly's eye. As soon as the
insect spies such a cluster, the colour seems to act as a stimulant to
his broad wings, just as the candle-light does to those of his cousin
the moth. Off he sails at once, as if by automatic action, towards the
distant patch, and there both robs the plant of its honey and at the
same time carries to it on his legs and head fertilising pollen from
the last of its congeners which he favoured with a call. For of course
both bees and butterflies stick on the whole to a single species at a
time; or else the flowers would only get uselessly hybridised instead
of being impregnated with pollen from other plants of their own
kind. For this purpose it is that most plants lay themselves out to
secure the attention of only two or three varieties among their insect
allies, while they make their nectaries either too deep or too shallow
for the convenience of all other kinds. Nature, though eager for
cross-fertilisation, abhors 'miscegenation' with all the bitterness of an
American politician.

Insects, however, differ much from one another in their æsthetic

tastes, and flowers are adapted accordingly to the varying fancies of
the different kinds. Here, for example, is a spray of common white
galium, which attracts and is fertilised by small flies, who generally
frequent white blossoms. But here, again, not far off, I find a
luxuriant mass of the yellow species, known by the quaint name of
'lady's bedstraw'—a legacy from the old legend which represents it
as having formed Our Lady's bed in the manger at Bethlehem. Now
why has this kind of galium yellow flowers, while its near kinsman
yonder has them snowy white? The reason is that lady's bedstraw is
fertilised by small beetles; and beetles are known to be one among
the most colour-loving races of insects. You may often find one of
their number, the lovely bronze and golden-mailed rose-chafer,
buried deeply in the very centre of a red garden rose, and reeling
about when touched as if drunk with pollen and honey. Almost all
the flowers which beetles frequent are consequently brightly decked
in scarlet or yellow. On the other hand, the whole family of the
umbellates, those tall plants with level bunches of tiny blossoms, like
the fool's parsley, have all but universally white petals; and Müller,
the most statistical of naturalists, took the trouble to count the
number of insects which paid them a visit. He found that only 14 per
cent. were bees, while the remainder consisted mainly of
miscellaneous small flies and other arthropodous riff-raff; whereas in
the brilliant class of composites, including the asters, sunflowers,
daisies, dandelions, and thistles, nearly 75 per cent. of the visitors
were steady, industrious bees. Certain dingy blossoms which lay
themselves out to attract wasps are obviously adapted, as Müller
quaintly remarks, 'to a less æsthetically cultivated circle of visitors.'
But the most brilliant among all insect-fertilised flowers are those
which specially affect the society of butterflies; and they are only
surpassed in this respect throughout all nature by the still larger and
more magnificent tropical species which owe their fertilisation to
humming-birds and brush-tongued lories.

Is it not a curious, yet a comprehensible circumstance, that the

tastes which thus show themselves in the development, by natural
selection, of lovely flowers, should also show themselves in the
marked preference for beautiful mates? Poised on yonder sprig of
harebell stands a little purple-winged butterfly, one of the most
exquisite among our British kinds. That little butterfly owes its own
rich and delicately shaded tints to the long selective action of a
million generations among its ancestors. So we find throughout that
the most beautifully coloured birds and insects are always those
which have had most to do with the production of bright-coloured
fruits and flowers. The butterflies and rose-beetles are the most
gorgeous among insects: the humming-birds and parrots are the
most gorgeous among birds. Nay more, exactly like effects have
been produced in two hemispheres on different tribes by the same
causes. The plain brown swifts of the North have developed among
tropical West Indian and South American orchids the metallic
gorgets and crimson crests of the humming-bird: while a totally
unlike group of Asiatic birds have developed among the rich flora of
India and the Malay Archipelago the exactly similar plumage of the
exquisite sun-birds. Just as bees depend upon flowers, and flowers
upon bees, so the colour-sense of animals has created the bright
petals of blossoms; and the bright petals have reacted upon the
tastes of the animals themselves, and through their tastes upon their
own appearance.
 XII.

SPECKLED TROUT.

It is a piece of the common vanity of anglers to suppose that they

know something about speckled trout. A fox might almost as well
pretend that he was intimately acquainted with the domestic habits
of poultry, or an Iroquois describe the customs of the Algonquins
from observations made upon the specimens who had come under
his scalping-knife. I will allow that anglers are well versed in the
necessity for fishing up-stream rather than in the opposite direction;
and I grant that they have attained an empirical knowledge of the
æsthetic preferences of trout in the matter of blue duns and red
palmers; but that as a body they are familiar with the speckled trout
at home I deny. If you wish to learn all about the race in its own life
you must abjure rod and line, and creep quietly to the side of the
pools in an unfished brooklet, like this on whose bank I am now
seated; and then, if you have taken care not to let your shadow fall
upon the water, you may sit and watch the live fish themselves for
an hour together, as they bask lazily in the sunlight, or rise now and
then at cloudy moments with a sudden dart at a May-fly who is
trying in vain to lay her eggs unmolested on the surface of the
stream. The trout in my little beck are fortunately too small even for
poachers to care for tickling them: so I am able entirely to preserve
them as objects for philosophical contemplation, without any danger
of their being scared away from their accustomed haunts by
intrusive anglers.

Trout always have a recognised home of their own, inhabited by a

pretty fixed number of individuals. But if you catch the two sole
denizens of a particular scour, you will find another pair installed in
their place to-morrow. Young fry seem always ready to fill up the
vacancies caused by the involuntary retirement of their elders. Their
size depends almost entirely upon the quantity of food they can get;
for an adult fish may weigh anything at any time of his life, and
there is no limit to the dimensions they may theoretically attain. Mr.
Herbert Spencer, who is an angler as well as a philosopher, well
observes that where the trout are many they are generally small;
and where they are large they are generally few. In the mill-stream
down the valley they measure only six inches, though you may fill a
basket easily enough on a cloudy day; but in the canal reservoir,
where there are only half-a-dozen fish altogether, a magnificent
eight-pounder has been taken more than once. In this way we can
understand the origin of the great lake trout, which weigh
sometimes forty pounds. They are common trout which have taken
to living in broader waters, where large food is far more abundant,
but where shoals of small fish would starve. The peculiarities thus
impressed upon them have been handed down to their descendants,
till at length they have become sufficiently marked to justify us in
regarding them as a separate species. But it is difficult to say what
makes a species in animals so very variable as fish. There are, in
fact, no less than twelve kinds of trout wholly peculiar to the British
Islands, and some of these are found in very restricted areas. Thus,
the Loch Stennis trout inhabits only the tarns of Orkney; the Galway
sea trout lives nowhere but along the west coast of Ireland; the
gillaroo never strays out of the Irish loughs; the Killin charr is
confined to a single sheet of water in Mayo; and other species
belong exclusively to the Llanberis lakes, to Lough Melvin, or to a
few mountain pools of Wales and Scotland. So great is the variety
that may be produced by small changes of food and habitat. Even
the salmon himself is only a river trout who has acquired the habit of
going down to the sea, where he gets immensely increased
quantities of food (for all the trout kind are almost omnivorous), and
grows big in proportion. But he still retains many marks of his early
existence as a river fish. In the first place, every salmon is hatched
from the egg in fresh water, and grows up a mere trout. The young
parr, as the salmon is called in this stage of its growth, is actually (as
far as physiology goes) a mature fish, and is capable of producing
milt, or male spawn, which long caused it to be looked upon as a
separate species. It really represents, however, the early form of the
salmon, before he took to his annual excursion to the sea. The
ancestral fish, only a hundredth fraction in weight of his huge
descendant, must have somehow acquired the habit of going
seaward—possibly from a drying up of his native stream in seasons
of drought. In the sea, he found himself suddenly supplied with an
unwonted store of food, and grew, like all his kind under similar
circumstances, to an extraordinary size. Thus he attains, as it were,
to a second and final maturity. But salmon cannot lay their eggs in
the sea; or at least, if they did, the young parr would starve for want
of their proper food, or else be choked by the salt water, to which
the old fish have acclimatised themselves. Accordingly, with the
return of the spawning season there comes back an instinctive
desire to seek once more the native fresh water. So the salmon
return up stream to spawn, and the young are hatched in the kind of
surroundings which best suit their tender gills. This instinctive
longing for the old home may probably have arisen during an
intermediate stage, when the developing species still haunted only
the brackish water near the river mouths; and as those fish alone
which returned to the head waters could preserve their race, it
would soon grow hardened into a habit engrained in the nervous
system, like the migration of birds or the clustering of swarming
bees around their queen. In like manner the Jamaican land-crabs,
which themselves live on the mountain-tops, come down every year
to lay their eggs in the Caribbean; because, like all other crabs, they
pass their first larval stage as swimming tadpoles, and afterwards
take instinctively to the mountains, as the salmon takes to the sea.
Such a habit could only have arisen by one generation after another
venturing further and further inland, while always returning at the
proper season to the native element for the deposition of the eggs.
These trout here, however, differ from the salmon in one important
particular beside their relative size, and that is that they are
beautifully speckled in their mature form, instead of being merely
silvery like the larger species. The origin of the pretty speckles is
probably to be found in the constant selection by the fish of the
most beautiful among their number as mates. Just as singing birds
are in their fullest and clearest song at the nesting period, and just
as many brilliant species only possess their gorgeous plumage while
they are going through their courtship, and lose the decoration after
the young brood is hatched, so the trout are most brightly coloured
at spawning time, and become lank and dingy after the eggs have
been safely deposited. The parent fish ascend to the head-waters of
their native river during the autumn season to spawn, and then,
their glory dimmed, they return down-stream to the deep pools,
where they pass the winter sulkily, as if ashamed to show
themselves in their dull and dusky suits. But when spring comes
round once more, and flies again become abundant, the trout begin
to move up-stream afresh, and soon fatten out to their customary
size and brilliant colours. It might seem at first sight that creatures
so humble as these little fish could hardly have sufficiently developed
aesthetic tastes to prefer one mate above another on the score of
beauty. But we must remember that every species is very sensitive
to small points of detail in its own kind, and that the choice would
only be exerted between mates generally very like one another, so
that extremely minute differences must necessarily turn the scale in
favour of one particular suitor rather than his rivals. Anglers know
that trout are attracted by bright colours, that they can distinguish
the different flies upon which they feed, and that artificial flies must
accordingly be made at least into a rough semblance of the original
insects. Some scientific fishermen even insist that it is no use
offering them a brown drake at the time of year or the hour of day
when they are naturally expecting a red spinner. Of course their
sight is by no means so perfect as our own, but it probably includes
a fair idea of form, and an acute perception of colour, while there is
every reason to believe that all the trout family have a decided love
of metallic glitter, such as that of silver or of the salmon's scales. Mr.
Darwin has shown that the little stickleback goes through an
elaborate courtship, and I have myself watched trout which seemed
to me as obviously love-making as any pair of turtle-doves I ever
saw. In their early life salmon fry and young trout are almost quite
indistinguishable, being both marked with blue patches (known as
'finger-marks') on their sides, which are remnants of the ancestral
colouring once common to the whole race. But as they grow up,
their later-acquired tastes begin to produce a divergence, due
originally to this selective preference of certain beautiful mates; and
the adult salmon clothes himself from head to tail in sheeny silver,
while the full-grown trout decks his sides with the beautiful speckles
which have earned him his popular name. Countless generations of
slight differences, selected from time to time by the strongest and
handsomest fish, have sufficed at length to bring about these
conspicuous variations from the primitive type, which the young of
both races still preserve.
 XIII.

DODDER AND BROOMRAPE.

This afternoon, strolling through the under-cliff, I have come across

two quaint and rather uncommon flowers among the straggling
brushwood. One of them is growing like a creeper around the
branches of this overblown gorse-bush. It is the lesser dodder, a
pretty clustering mass of tiny pale pink convolvulus blossoms. The
stem consists of a long red thread, twining round and round the
gorse, and bursting out here and there into thick bundles of
beautiful bell-shaped flowers. But where are the leaves? You may
trace the red threads through their labyrinthine windings up and
down the supporting gorse-branches all in vain: there is not a leaf to
be seen. As a matter of fact, the dodder has none. It is one of the
most thorough-going parasites in all nature. Ordinary green-leaved
plants live by making starches for themselves out of the carbonic
acid in the air, under the influence of sunlight; but the dodder simply
fastens itself on to another plant, sends down rootlets or suckers
into its veins, and drinks up sap stored with ready-made starches or
other foodstuffs, originally destined by its host for the supply of its
own growing leaves, branches, and blossoms. It lives upon the gorse
just as parasitically as the little green aphides live upon our rose-
bushes. The material which it uses up in pushing forth its long
thread-like stem and clustered bells is so much dead loss to the
unfortunate plant on which it has fixed itself.

Old-fashioned books tell us that the mistletoe is a perfect parasite,

while the dodder is an imperfect one; and I believe almost all
botanists will still repeat the foolish saying to the present day. But it
really shows considerable haziness as to what a true parasite is. The
mistletoe is a plant which has taken, it is true, to growing upon
other trees. Its very viscid berries are useful for attaching the seeds
to the trunk of the oak or the apple; and there it roots itself into the
body of its host. But it soon produces real green leaves of its own,
which contain the ordinary chlorophyll found in other leaves, and
help it to manufacture starch, under the influence of sunlight, on its
own account. It is not, therefore, a complete drag upon the tree
which it infests; for though it takes sap and mineral food from the
host, it supplies itself with carbon, which is after all the important
thing for plant-life. Dodder, however, is a parasite pure and simple.
Its seeds fall originally upon the ground, and there root themselves
at first like those of any other plant. But, as it grows, its long twining
stem begins to curl for support round some other and stouter stalk.
If it stopped there, and then produced leaves of its own, like the
honeysuckle and the clematis, there would be no great harm done:
and the dodder would be but another climbing plant the more in our
flora. However, it soon insidiously repays the support given it by
sending down little bud-like suckers, through which it draws up
nourishment from the gorse or clover on which it lives. Thus it has
no need to develop leaves of its own; and it accordingly employs all
its stolen material in sending forth matted thread-like stems and
bunch after bunch of bright flowers. As these increase and multiply,
they at last succeed in drawing away all the nutriment from the
supporting plant, which finally dies under the constant drain, just as
a horse might die under the attacks of a host of leeches. But this
matters little to the dodder, which has had time to be visited and
fertilised by insects, and to set and ripen its numerous seeds. One
species, the greater dodder, is thus parasitic upon hops and nettles;
a second kind twines round flax; and the third, which I have here
under my eyes, mainly confines its dangerous attentions to gorse,
clover, and thyme. All of them are, of course, deadly enemies to the
plants they infest.
How the dodder acquired this curious mode of life it is not difficult to
see. By descent it is a bind-weed, or wild convolvulus, and its
blossoms are in the main miniature convolvulus blossoms still. Now,
all bind-weeds, as everybody knows, are climbing plants, which
twine themselves round stouter stems for mere physical support This
is in itself a half-parasitic habit, because it enables the plant to
dispense with the trouble of making a thick and solid stem for its
own use. But just suppose that any bind-weed, instead of merely
twining, were to put forth here and there little tendrils, something
like those of the ivy, which managed somehow to grow into the bark
of the host, and so naturally graft themselves to its tissues. In that
case the plant would derive nutriment from the stouter stem with no
expense to itself, and it might naturally be expected to grow strong
and healthy, and hand down its peculiarities to its descendants. As
the leaves would thus be rendered needless, they would first
become very much reduced in size, and would finally disappear
altogether, according to the universal custom of unnecessary organs.
So we should get at length a leafless plant, with numerous flowers
and seeds, just like the dodder. Parasites, in fact, whether animal or
vegetable, always end by becoming mere reproductive sacs,
mechanisms for the simple elaboration of eggs or seeds. This is just
what has happened to the dodder before me.

The other queer plant here is a broomrape. It consists of a tall,

somewhat faded-looking stem, upright instead of climbing, and
covered with brown or purplish scales in the place of leaves. Its
flowers resemble the scales in colour, and the dead-nettle in shape.
It is, in fact, a parasitic dead-nettle, a trifle less degenerate as yet
than the dodder. This broomrape has acquired somewhat the same
habits as the other plant, only that it fixes itself on the roots of
clover or broom, from which it sucks nutriment by its own root, as
the dodder does by its stem-suckers. Of course it still retains in most
particulars its original characteristics as a dead-nettle; it grows with
their upright stem and their curiously shaped flowers, so specially
adapted for fertilisation by insect visitors. But it has naturally lost its
leaves, for which it has no further use, and it possesses no
chlorophyll, as the mistletoe does. Yet it has not probably been
parasitic for as long a time as the dodder, since it still retains a
dwindling trace of its leaves in the shape of dry purply scales,
something like those of young asparagus shoots. These leaves are
now, in all likelihood, actually undergoing a gradual atrophy, and we
may fairly expect that in the course of a few thousand years they
will disappear altogether. At present, however, they remain very
conspicuous by their colour, which is not green, owing to the
absence of chlorophyll, but is due to the same pigment as that of
the blossoms. This generally happens with parasites, or with that
other curious sort of plants known as saprophytes, which live upon
decaying living matter in the mould of forests. As they need no
green leaves, but have often inherited leafy structures of some sort,
in a more or less degenerate condition, from their self-supporting
ancestors, they usually display most beautiful colours in their stems
and scales, and several of them rank amongst our handsomest hot-
house plants. Even the dodder has red stalks. Their only work in life
being to elaborate the materials stolen from their host into the
brilliant pigments used in the petals for attracting insect fertilisers,
they pour this same dye into the stems and scales, which thus
render them still more conspicuous to the insects' eyes. Moreover, as
they use their whole material in producing flowers, many of these
are very large and handsome; one huge Sumatran species has a
blossom which measures three feet across. On the other hand, their
seeds are usually small and very numerous. Thousands of seeds
must fall on unsuitable places, spring up, and waste all their tiny
store of nourishment, find no host at hand on which to fasten
themselves, and so die down for want of food. It is only by
producing a few thousand young plants for every one destined
ultimately to survive that dodders and broomrapes manage to
preserve their types at all.
 XIV.

DOG'S MERCURY AND PLANTAIN.

The hedge and bank in Haye Lane are now a perfect tangled mass
of creeping plants, among which I have just picked out a queer little
three-cornered flower, hardly known even to village children, but
christened by our old herbalists 'dog's mercury.' It is an ancient trick
of language to call coarser or larger plants by the specific title of
some smaller or cultivated kind, with the addition of an animal's
name. Thus we have radish and horse-radish, chestnut and horse-
chestnut, rose and dog-rose, parsnip and cow-parsnip, thistle and
sow-thistle. On the same principle, a somewhat similar plant being
known as mercury, this perennial weed becomes dog's mercury.
Both, of course, go back to some imaginary medicinal virtue in the
herb which made it resemble the metal in the eyes of old-fashioned
practitioners.

Dog's mercury is one of the oddest English flowers I know. Each

blossom has three small green petals, and either several stamens, or
else a pistil, in the centre. There is nothing particularly remarkable in
the flower being green, for thousands of other flowers are green and
we never notice them as in any way unusual. In fact, we never as a
rule notice green blossoms at all. Yet anybody who picked a piece of
dog's mercury could not fail to be struck by its curious appearance.
It does not in the least resemble the inconspicuous green flowers of
the stinging-nettle, or of most forest trees: it has a very distinct set
of petals which at once impress one with the idea that they ought to
be coloured. And so indeed they ought: for dog's mercury is a
degenerate plant which once possessed a brilliant corolla and was
fertilised by insects, but which has now fallen from its high estate
and reverted to the less advanced mode of fertilisation by the
intermediation of the wind. For some unknown reason or other this
species and all its relations have discovered that they get on better
by the latter and usually more wasteful plan than by the former and
usually more economical one. Hence they have given up producing
large bright petals, because they no longer need to attract the eyes
of insects; and they have also given up the manufacture of honey,
which under their new circumstances would be a mere waste of
substance to them. But the dog's mercury still retains a distinct mark
of its earlier insect-attracting habits in these three diminutive petals.
Others of its relations have lost even these, so that the original floral
form is almost completely obscured in their case. The spurges are
familiar English roadside examples, and their flowers are so
completely degraded that even botanists for a long time mistook
their nature and analogies.

The male and female flowers of dog's mercury have taken to living
upon separate plants. Why is this? Well, there was no doubt a time
when every blossom had both stamens and pistil, as dog-roses and
buttercups always have. But when the plant took to wind fertilisation
it underwent a change of structure. The stamens on some blossoms
became aborted, while the pistil became aborted on others. This was
necessary in order to prevent self-fertilisation; for otherwise the
pollen of each blossom, hanging out as it does to the wind, would
have been very liable to fall upon its own pistil. But the present
arrangement obviates any such contingency, by making one plant
bear all the male flowers and another plant all the female ones.
Why, again, are the petals green? I think because dog's mercury
would be positively injured by the visits of insects. It has no honey
to offer them, and if they came to it at all, they would only eat up
the pollen itself. Hence I suspect that those flowers among the
mercuries which showed any tendency to retain the original coloured
petals would soon get weeded out, because insects would eat up all
their pollen, thus preventing them from fertilising others; while those
which had green petals would never be noticed and so would be
permitted to fertilise one another after their new fashion. In fact,
when a blossom which has once depended upon insects for its
fertilisation is driven by circumstances to depend upon the wind, it
seems to derive a positive advantage from losing all those attractive
features by which its ancestors formerly allured the eyes of bees or
beetles.

Here, again, on the roadside is a bit of plantain. Everybody knows its

flat rosette of green leaves and its tall spike of grass-like blossom,
with long stamens hanging out to catch the breeze. Now plantain is
a case exactly analogous to dog's mercury. It is an example of a
degraded blossom. Once upon a time it was a sort of distant cousin
to the veronica, that pretty sky-blue speedwell which abounds
among the meadows in June and July. But these particular
speedwells gave up devoting themselves to insects and became
adapted for fertilisation by the wind instead. So you must look close
at them to see at all that the flowering spike is made up of a
hundred separate little four-rayed blossoms, whose pale and faded
petals are tucked away out of sight flat against the stem. Yet their
shape and arrangement distinctly recall the beautiful veronica, and
leave one in little doubt as to the origin of the plant. At the same
time a curious device has sprung up which answers just the same
purpose as the separation of the male and female flowers on the
dog's mercury. Each plantain blossom has both stamens and pistils,
but the pistils come to maturity first, and are fertilised by pollen
blown to them from some neighbouring spike. Their feathery plumes
are admirably adapted for catching and utilising any stray golden
grain which happens to pass that way. After the pistils have faded,
the stamens ripen, and hang out at the end of long waving
filaments, so as to discharge all their pollen with effect. On each
spike of blossoms the lower flowerets open first; and so, if you pick
a half-blown spike, you will see that all the stamens are ripe below,
and all the pistils above. Were the opposite arrangement to occur,