A propos to these papers, which furnish excellent illustrations of it, let us recognize Darwin’s great service to natural science in bringing back to it Teleology; so that, instead of Morphology versus Teleology, we shall have Morphology wedded to Teleology.  To many, no doubt, evolutionary Teleology comes in such a questionable shape as to seem shorn of all its goodness; but they will think better of it in time, when their ideas become adjusted, and they see what an impetus the new doctrines have given to investigation.  They are much mistaken who suppose that Darwinism is only of speculative importance, and perhaps transient interest.  In its working applications it has proved to be a new power, eminently practical and fruitful.

And here, again, we are bound to note a striking contrast to Mr. Brown, greatly as we revere his memory.  He did far less work than was justly to be expected from him.  Mr. Darwin not only points out the road, but labors upon it indefatigably and unceasingly.  A most commendable noblesse oblige assures us that he will go on while strength (would we could add health) remains.  The vast amount of such work he has already accomplished might overtax the powers of the strongest.  That it could have been done at all under constant infirm health is most wonderful.

X

INSECTIVOROUS PLANTS

(The Nation, April 2 and 9, 1874)

That animals should feed upon plants is natural and normal, and the reverse seems impossible.  But the adage, “Natura non agit saltatim,” has its application even here.  It is the naturalist, rather than Nature, that draws hard and fast lines everywhere, and marks out abrupt boundaries where she shades off with gradations.  However opposite the parts which animals and vegetables play in the economy of the world as the two opposed kingdoms of organic Nature, it is becoming more and more obvious that they are not only two contiguous kingdoms, but are parts of one whole—­antithetical and complementary to each other, indeed; but such “thin partitions do the bounds divide” that no definitions yet framed hold good without exception.  This is a world of transition in more senses than is commonly thought; and one of the lessons which the philosophical naturalist learns, or has to learn, is, that differences the most wide and real in the main, and the most essential, may nevertheless be here and there connected or bridged over by gradations.  There is a limbo filled with organisms which never rise high enough in the scale to be manifestly either animal or plant, unless it may be said of some of them that they are each in turn and neither long.  There are undoubted animals which produce the essential material of vegetable fabric, or build up a part of their structure of it, or elaborate the characteristic leaf-green which, under solar light, assimilates inorganic into organic matter, the most distinguishing function of vegetation.