Note 211 — Chapter XIV

The general arguments and objections here set forth will apply with equal force to Professor G. Henslow's theory of the origin of the various forms and structures of flowers as due to "the responsive actions of the protoplasm in consequence of the irritations set up by the weights, pressures, thrusts, tensions, etc., of the insect visitors" (The Origin of Floral Structures through Insect and other Agencies, p. 340). On the assumption that acquired characters are inherited, such irritations may have had something to do with the initiation of variations and with the production of certain details of structure, but they are clearly incompetent to have brought about the more important structural and functional modifications of flowers. Such are, the various adjustments of length and position of the stamens to bring the pollen to the insect and from the insect to the stigma; the various motions of stamens and styles at the right time and the right direction; the physiological adjustments bringing about fertility or sterility in heterostyled plants; the traps, springs, and complex movements of various parts of orchids; and innumerable other remarkable phenomena.

For the explanation of these we have no resource but variation and selection, to the effects of which, acting alternately with regression or degradation as above explained (p. 328) must be imputed the development of the countless floral structures we now behold. Even the primitive flowers, whose initiation may, perhaps, have been caused, or rendered possible, by the irritation set up by insects' visits, must, from their very origin, have been modified, in accordance with the supreme law of utility, by means of variation and survival of the fittest.