The belief that plants of one species or genus become new species or genera in order to accommodate themselves to certain insects for which they may be said to have special preferences, seems to have become so general with intelligent botanists, and so firmly incorporated with their intellectual life, that we continually meet with its expression in botanical essays. The proposition is not put quite in that way. As generally expressed it is that plants become specialized to suit the special insect visitors with a view to cross-fertilization by these special guests and no others. Flowers become long-tubed, for instance, in order that they might be served only by long-tongued insects; still facts continually arise which puzzle the admirers of the ingenious speculation. A beautiful cape terrestrial orchid, Disa grandiflora is fully equipped for a specialized fertilization by insect visitants, but no insect is now known to frequent it. Hence it never perfects seeds. The author of the essay believes that after having changed its character to favor its special insect, the special insect became extinct. This catastrophe, the author suggests, must have happened long ago, even as geologic time is reckoned.

Now its increase is by small tubers which it pushes out like potatoes from the main stem. The author supposes the plant "adopted"in "self-defense" this method of increase when it found itself deserted by its insect friend. The inconsistencies of these speculations, with the supposed advantages of cross-fertilization, do not seem to be perceived. It is first assumed that plants that breed " in and in " have a poor chance for existence during long geologic ages; so a plant that self-fertilizes itself becomes another species or genus in order to obtain cross-fertilization, finds itself mistaken, and then changes to another species in which it again has to have "in and in " breeding of the closest kind by tubers, and in this close breeding condition manages to hold itself on "through long geologic ages," apparently as well as if it had continued the cross-fertilization by the aid of its insect friend. Just how such views of development commend themselves to the minds of the many acute botanists who have adopted them, seems a mystery to the laity. - Independent.