ich I am unable to agree. But the work which he has done taken as
a whole appears to me so admirable that I do so with the utmost respect.
He points out, as Bentham had already done, that long-distance dispersal
is fortuitous. And being so it cannot have been provided for by
previous adaptation. He says (Guppy, op. cit. II. page 99.): "It is not
conceivable that an organism can be adapted to conditions outside
its environment." To this we must agree; but, it may be asked, do the
general means of plant dispersal violate so obvious a principle? He
proceeds: "The great variety of the modes of dispersal of seeds is in
itself an indication that the dispersing agencies avail themselves in a
hap-hazard fashion of characters and capacities that have been developed
in other connections." (Loc. cit. page 102.) "Their utility in these
respects is an accident in the plant's life." (Loc. cit. page 100.) He
attributes this utility to a "determining agency," an influence which
constantly reappears in various shapes in the literature of Evolution
and is ultra-scientific in the sense that it bars the way to the search
for material causes. He goes so far as to doubt whether fleshy fruits
are an adaptation for the dispersal of their contained seeds. (Loc. cit.
page 102.) Writing as I am from a hillside which is covered by hawthorn
bushes sown by birds, I confess I can feel little doubt on the subject
myself. The essential fact which Guppy brings out is that long-distance
unlike short-distance dispersal is not universal and purposeful, but
selective and in that sense accidental. But it is not difficult to see
how under favouring conditions one must merge into the other.

Guppy has raised one novel point which can only be briefly referred to
but which is of extreme interest. There are grounds for thinking that
flowers and insects have mutually reacted upon one another in their
evolution. Guppy suggests that something of the same kind may be true
of birds. I must content myself with the quotation of a single sentence.
"With the secular drying of the globe and the consequent differentiation
of climate is to be connected the suspension to a great extent of the
agency of birds as plant dispersers in later ages, not only in the
Pacific Islands but all over the tropics. The changes of climate, birds
and plants have gone on together, the range of the bird being controlled
by the climate, and the distribution of the plant being largely
dependent on