them by real as well as by transcendental bonds to lower and antecedent phases of existence.

The topic of the personality of living beings, like most other biological subjects, relates itself more or less indirectly with matters personal and ethical which are far beyond the scope of the present study. But it is permissible, in a closing sentence, to remark that many of the characteristic traits of the life of the higher animals, including man himself, may perchance be traceable to an unconscious perpetuation of habits and customs which find their beginnings and germs in the lower colonial organisms whose history has just been discussed. The nervous acts of man and the higher animals generally, for instance, convince us that many of the functions of the brain, and the automatic actions of the body depending on the independent constitution of our nerve-centres, may be legitimately explained by referring them, as regards their origin, to an originally colonial constitution, and to a primitively colonial ancestry. Even a glance at the serial repetition of the bones (or vertebræ) in the spine of man or other backboned animal, eloquently enough testifies to the apparent colonial constitution of these forms. There is a striking analogy, which has not escaped biological notice, between the arrangement of these segments in the Vertebrata and the similar disposition of parts in the Articulata or worm and centipede-type. However the Vertebrate's serial arrangement has originated, it may perhaps be held as legitimate evidence of compound nature; just, indeed, as the colonial nature of Vertebrate tissues demonstrates that nature in another fashion. And so, also, with other phases of human relationship and functions. As the various detached buds of a hydra, or the free-swimming buds of a zoophyte, are still part and parcel of the individual constitution, or as the plant-lice and bees, apparently of distinct personality, are in reality only parts of the connected colony, so, in the sphere of human relationships, the origin of the tribal connection or of the family constitution itself the most expressive of all human institutions-may perchance be found to exist in germform in the hidden transcendental bond which the philosophy of the lower animal individuality discloses. The deep-seated affections and relationships which, collectively, we term the "family" and "society" respectively, may have had their first beginnings in the connected series of interests which even the zoophyte-series discloses to view. In other words, we are constituted as we are, gregarious, social, and ethical, because we are physically "colonial" by constitution, and because in our origin we are essentially of colonial and compound nature. And if such a thought be regarded as too improbable for realisation, it should be borne in mind that our structural beginnings themselves are of the lowliest and simplest description. If the structural germs of the highest life begin, as they certainly do, under

an animalcular guise, is it overstepping the possibilities of natural facts to suggest that the social traits and characteristics to which that germ attains may likewise have had a lowly and material beginning? Such an idea, so far from possessing any elements of impossibility, is grounded on a rational basis-namely, on that opinion which teaches that community of origin may, and often does, entail similarity of results. Sufficient has been said to show that in human existence reign many of the colonial traits of lower spheres. And if, perchance, some dim echoes of such lowly traits may linger in the scientific mind when contemplating the highest existence of all, the mind will regard such similarity as founded upon no chance basis, but as having originated from that continuity of cause and effect which runs unbroken through the warp and woof of the universe of life.

XIV.

THE FERTILISATION OF FLOWERS.

FEW subjects, if any, are better calculated to awaken a lively interest in the investigation of natural laws and the phenomena of life at large, than the study of those processes of development whereby the races of animals and plants retain their hold upon the world, and maintain a continuous and unbroken round and cycle of existence. In such studies, more than in any others, we seem to gain near glimpses of Nature's ways and methods in fashioning the varied universe of living beings; whilst the lessons such topics are well calculated to enforce respecting the order of nature as a whole, form not the least important result of these investigations. The study of even the most commonplace object may, under the newer phases of research, be made to yield an amount of "sweetness and light" for which we might be wholly unprepared. The day of the Peter Bells, and of uninquiring moods and tenses, if not altogether a thing of the past, is happily already in its twilight stage. The schoolboy, with a primer of botany in hand, understands things at which the previous generation simply wondered. And even if the results of botanical study may occasionally be expressed by the hackneyed Wordsworthian idea of thoughts beyond tears, the modern student of plant-life has ample reason to congratulate himself on having attained the mastery of many ideas, which in past years were included under the poetic category of "expressive silence." The primrose still grows by the "river's brim," in truth, but it is no longer merely a yellow primrose. On the contrary, the flower is in greater part understood, the mechanism of its life is well-nigh completely within our mental grasp; and, best of all, its study has led in the past, as it leads even now, to the comprehension of wider ideas of nature, and more extensive views of plant life, than those which formerly met the gaze of the wayfarer in scientific pastures. The appreciation of what is involved in part of the life-history of a primrose may thus serve as a startingpoint for more extensive research into the phenomena of plantfertilisation at large; and this latter topic, in its turn, falls naturally into its proper niche in teaching us plain lessons respecting the manner in which the wide domain of life is regulated and governed.

By the "fertilisation" of a plant is meant to be indicated those actions or processes in virtue of which those little bodies named

"ovules" developed in the seed-vessel (Fig. 205, p) become "seeds," and through which they are fitted to develop into new plants. The unfertilised ovule: is incapable of producing a new plant. When set in the ground it would simply decay, as if it were a leaf or other detached and dead portion of the plant-economy. When,

on the contrary, it is duly fertilised, the ovule, becoming the "seed," has become possessed of the powers and properties in virtue of which it is capable of evolving the form of the parent-plant from which it was derived. So much for the very necessary botanical distinction

between "ovule" and "seed." The process of fertilisation is thus seen to be that on which the continuance of plant-existence depends. More closely regarded, it is known to be that which is capable under certain conditions of giving origin to new races or varieties of the plant-species. When the horticulturist, taking the pollen from one species or variety of plant, applies this fertilising matter to the ovules

of another variety or species, the characters of the two different races are combined and united in the "hybrid" progeny. Our gardens and conservatories-and, as we shall strive to show hereafter, the natural plant-creation at large-have benefited immensely in beauty from a knowledge of the changes in colour, form, and size, which this "cross-fertilisation" may produce. For instance, the finest of our rhododendrons are crosses in which the characters of Indian and American species have been thus blended. The union of the common heartsease with a large-flowered foreign pansy, has produced a new stock in which the excellences of both species are found. The pelargoniums of our conservatories represent hybrid stocks and varieties, which cross-fertilisation and cultivation have together produced from the small-petaled species of South Africa. Such results, among countless others, would seem to suggest that beneath the subject of cross-fertilisation, or even underlying that of ordinary fertilisation, there lies hid a mine of knowledge respecting the causes which have wrought out the existing variety of plant-life. For the plain and unfettered understanding of the subject in its less technical phases, or to lay the foundations of knowledge respecting an interesting field of natural-history study, no better subject could be selected than the history of even the commonest flower-such as a primrose. Rightly

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comprehending what is included in the phases of primrose-life, we may hope successfully to read some of the more abstruse problems presented by the wider aspects of plant existence at large. "The ruthe primrose that forsaken dies,” and the "cowslips wan that hang the pensive head," afford us delight even when we are living in all the simplicity of botanical ignorance. It is not too much to say that their systematic study may lead to the higher delights and more cultured joys included in the knowledge of some phases of natural law and in an understanding of the hows and whys of living nature.

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FIG. 208.-PRIMROSES.

The elementary botany of a primrose is a matter of few words. Like every other perfect flower, it consists of four parts or circles of organs placed one within the other. Outside, we perceive the circle of fine green leaves, which we name the calyx, each green leaf of this organ being named a sepal. In the primrose or campanula (Fig. 214), the sepals are united, although in many other flowers, (eg., buttercup and wall-flower) (Fig. 205, ca), we should find them free and separate. The calyx of all flowers is, for the most part, coloured green, its obvious use