Abstract
WE opened this little book in the hope of finding some new light thrown on the fascinating subject of Mimetism. The writings of Mr. Darwin, Mr. Wallace, and Mr. Bates have made even the non-scientific reading public familiar with the existence of wonderful external resemblances between animals belonging often to widely different natural orders; resemblances which those writers have sought to explain on the theory of Natural Selection. Though the most remarkable instances of Mimetism to which attention has been drawn, are chiefly to be found in the tropics, scarcely less interesting examples are furnished by certain families of our own native Hymenoptera and Diptera: even in the vegetable kingdom we need not seek far for superficial resemblances which are not underlain by any corresponding similarity of organic structure. To trace these “echoes” in plant life (why “Plant and Flower Life” we do not know), is Mr. Grindon's hobby and to say that he rides his hobby too hard is only what might perhaps be expected. There is only a very limited number of ways in which anthers can open to discharge the pollen and to call the dehiscence by recurved valves of the bay tree, an “echo” of the same method in the barberry, seems to us an instance of decidedly hard riding. Nevertheless the writer has collected together a large number of very interesting faces which will be of service to anyone who hereafter attempts a scientific explanation of these phenomena. The writer does not; we hope some one else will and he will then find this little book of some value. The style in which it is written, is not such as to commend it to the man of science. In his preface the writer says, “to be a philosophical treatise, the treatment must be aesthetic.” When we find the flowers of plants described as “those sweet harp-strings which, vibrating for ever, preserve to us the melodies of ancient Eden and by which they will be floated down the ages yet to come,” the treatment of the subject may be aesthetic; we can hardly admit it to be philosophical. Would Prof. Huxley or Dr. Hooker recognise the following description? “Every true naturalist enjoys a renewed puberty of the soul. While other people are young but once, he, like the cicada, in age recovers his spring-time. In this respect he is abreast of the man of genius, whose privilege, like that of the sunshine, is to weave as lovely a sky for the evening as for the morning.”
Echoes in Plant and Flower Life.
By Leo H. Grindon, Lecturer on Botany at the Royal School of Medicine, Manchester. (London: Pitman, 1869.)
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
B., A. Echoes in Plant and Flower Life . Nature 1, 380 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/001380d0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/001380d0