des loges et un style qui se rattachent tantot a un axe
verticale et tantot a un gynobase."

We thus see that with plants many morphological changes may be
attributed to the laws of growth and the inter-action of parts,
independently of natural selection. But with respect to Nageli's
doctrine of an innate tendency towards perfection or progressive
development, can it be said in the case of these strongly pronounced
variations, that the plants have been caught in the act of progressing
towards a higher state of development? On the contrary, I should infer
from the mere fact of the parts in question differing or varying greatly
on the same plant, that such modifications were of extremely small
importance to the plants themselves, of whatever importance they may
generally be to us for our classifications. The acquisition of a useless
part can hardly be said to raise an organism in the natural scale; and
in the case of the imperfect, closed flowers, above described, if any
new principle has to be invoked, it must be one of retrogression rather
than of progression; and so it must be with many parasitic and degraded
animals. We are ignorant of the exciting cause of the above specified
modifications; but if the unknown cause were to act almost uniformly for
a length of time, we may infer that the result would be almost uniform;
and in this case all the individuals of the species would be modified in
the same manner.

From the fact of the above characters being unimportant for the welfare
of the species, any slight variations which occurred in them would
not have been accumulated and augmented through natural selection. A
structure which has been developed through long-continued selection,
when it ceases to be of service to a species, generally becomes
variable, as we see with rudimentary organs; for it will no longer be
regulated by this same power of selection. But when, from the nature
of the organism and of the conditions, modifications have been induced
which are unimportant for the welfare of the species, they may be, and
apparently often have been, transmitted in nearly the same state to
numerous, otherwise modified, descendants. It cannot have been of much
importance to the greater number of mammals, birds, or reptiles, whether
they were clothed with hair, feathers or scales; yet hair has been
transmitted to almost all mammals, feathers to all birds, and scales to
all true reptiles. A structure, whatever it may be, wh