seem exposed to every fatality,—­without pausing to consider carnivorous species like the Drusera, which really act as animals,—­we are struck by the genius that some of our humblest flowers display in contriving that the visit of the bee shall infallibly procure them the crossed fertilisation they need.  See the marvellous fashion in which the Orchis Moris, our humble country orchid, combines the play of its rostellum and retinacula; observe the mathematical and automatic inclination and adhesion of its pollinia; as also the unerring double seesaw of the anthers of the wild sage, which touch the body of the visiting insect at a particular spot in order that the insect may, in its turn, touch the stigma of the neighbouring flower at another particular spot; watch, too, in the case of the Pedicularis Sylvatica, the successive, calculated movements of its stigma; and indeed the entrance of the bee into any one of these three flowers sets every organ vibrating, just as the skilful marksman who hits the black spot on the target will cause all the figures to move in the elaborate mechanisms we see in our village fairs.

We might go lower still, and show, as Ruskin has shown in his “Ethics of the Dust,” the character, habits, and artifices of crystals; their quarrels, and mode of procedure, when a foreign body attempts to oppose their plans, which are more ancient by far than our imagination can conceive; the manner in which they admit or repel an enemy, the possible victory of the weaker over the stronger, as, for instance, when the all-powerful quartz submits to the humble and wily epidote, and allows this last to conquer it; the struggle, terrible sometimes and sometimes magnificent, between the rock-crystal and iron; the regular, immaculate expansion and uncompromising purity of one hyaline block, which rejects whatever is foul, and the sickly growth, the evident immorality, of its brother, which admits corruption, and writhes miserably in the void; as we might quote also the strange phenomena of crystalline cicatrisation and reintegration mentioned by Claude Bernard, etc.  But the mystery here becomes too foreign to us.  Let us keep to our flowers, which are the last expression of a life that has yet some kinship with our own.  We are not dealing now with animals or insects, to which we attribute a special, intelligent will, thanks to which they survive.  We believe, rightly or wrongly, that the flowers possess no such will; at least we cannot discover in them the slightest trace of the organs wherein will, intellect, and initiative of action, are usually born and reside.  It follows, therefore, that all that acts in them in so admirable a fashion must directly proceed from what we elsewhere call nature.  We are no longer concerned with the intellect of the individual; here we find the un conscious, undivided force in the act of ensnaring other forms of itself.  Shall we on that account refuse to believe that these snares are pure accidents, occurring