are wastefully dispersed by the winds to one which reaches a female flower and fertilizes a seed.  Contrast this with one of the close-fertilized flowers of a violet, in which there are not many times more grains of pollen produced than there are of seeds to be fertilized; or with an orchis-flower, in which the proportion is not widely different.  These latter are certainly the more economical; but there is reason to believe that the former arrangement is not wasteful.  The plan in the violet-flower assures the result with the greatest possible saving of material and action; but this result, being close-fertilization or breeding in and in, would, without much doubt, in the course of time, defeat the very object of having seeds at all.[XIII-3] So the same plant produces other flowers also, provided with a large surplus of pollen, and endowed (as the others are not) with color, fragrance, and nectar, attractive to certain insects, which are thereby induced to convey this pollen from blossom to blossom, that it may fulfill its office.  In such blossoms, and in the great majority of flowers, the fertilization and consequent perpetuity of which are committed to insects, the likelihood that much pollen may be left behind or lost in the transit is sufficient reason for the apparent superfluity.  So, too, the greater economy in orchis-flowers is accounted for by the fact that the pollen is packed in coherent masses, all attached to a common stalk, the end of which is expanded into a sort of button, with a glutinous adhesive face (like a bit of sticking-plaster), and this is placed exactly where the head of a moth or butterfly will be pressed against it when it sucks nectar from the flower, and so the pollen will be bodily conveyed from blossom to blossom, with small chance of waste or loss.  The floral world is full of such contrivances; and while they exist the doctrine of purpose or final cause is not likely to die out.  Now, in the contrasted case, that of pine-trees, the vast superabundance of pollen would be sheer waste if the intention was to fertilize the seeds of the same tree, or if there were any provision for insect-carriage; but with wide-breeding as the end, and the wind which “bloweth where it listeth” as the means, no one is entitled to declare that pine-pollen is in wasteful excess.  The cheapness of wind-carriage may be set against the overproduction of pollen.

Similar considerations may apply to the mould-fungi and other very low organisms, with spores dispersed through the air in countless myriads, but of which only an infinitesimal portion find opportunity for development.  The myriads perish.  The exceptional one, falling into a fit medium, is imagined by the Westminster Reviewer to argue design from the beneficial provision it finds itself enjoying, in happy ignorance of the perishing or latent multitude.  But, in view of the large and important part they play (as the producers of all fermentation and as the omnipresent scavenger-police of Nature), no good ground appears for arguing either wasteful excess or absence of design from the vast disparity between their potential and their actual numbers.  The reserve and the active members of the force should both be counted in, ready as they always and everywhere are for service.  Considering their ubiquity, persistent vitality, and promptitude of action upon fitting occasion, the suggestion would rather be that, while