The Evolution of PlantsH. Holt and Company, 1911 - 256 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
allies Angio Angiosperms appear arrangement asexual bearing Bennettiteæ Bennettites borne botanists bracts branches Bryophytes Calamites Carboniferous carpels cells characters class of plants Club-mosses Coal Measures common cone Coniferæ Conifers Cordaiteæ Cretaceous Cryptogams Cycadophyta Cycads Cycas developed Devonian Dicotyledons egg-cell embryo Equisetum evidence evolution female fertile leaf fertile scales fertilisation Flora Flowering Plants fossil plants fronds fructifications genus Gymnosperms heterosporous higher Horsetails Isoëtes kinds of spores known large number later leaflets leaves Lepidodendron living Lycopodium Lycopods Lyginodendron Maidenhair-tree male megasporangium megaspore Mesozoic Miadesmia micropyle microspores Monocotyledons Mosses organised organs ovules Paleozoic period pith pollen pollen-chamber pollen-grains pollen-sacs pollen-tube present probably prothallus Pteridosperms recent reproduction resemblance rocks roots secondary seed-bearing Seed-plants seeds Selaginella sexual Sigillaria species spermatozoids sperms Sphenophylls sporangia sporangium Spore-plants spore-sacs spores sporophyll stalk stamens stem structure tion tissue trees Triassic Upper vascular strands vegetation whole whorls wood and bast Zamia
Popular passages
Page 10 - As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected.
Page 11 - If it profit a plant to have its seeds more and more widely disseminated by the wind, I can see no greater difficulty...
Page 11 - This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.
Page 14 - Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit. to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection.
Page 9 - At the commencement of my observations it seemed to me probable that a careful study of domesticated animals and of cultivated plants would offer the best chance of making out this obscure problem. Nor have I been disappointed ; in this and in all other perplexing cases I have invariably found that our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of variation under domestication, afforded the best and safest clue.
Page 231 - It is a more important consideration, leading to the same result, as lately insisted on by Dr. Falconer, namely, that the period during which each species underwent modification...
Page 11 - I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good : Nature only for that of the being which she tends.
Page 13 - The thought of each age is the foundation of that which follows. Darwin was an admirer of Paley, a member of his own College. He swept in the whole of Paley's teleology, simply dispensing with its supernatural explanation. The beauty of this apparent secularizing or naturalizing of teleology is that it allowed those like Gray who wanted teleology to claim that Darwin evidences it (all is designed to progress to perfection), and those like Huxley who wanted to believe that teleology "had received...
Page 1 - WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, MA A complete classified list of the volumes of THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY already published will be found at the back of this took. BY ,\. HAROLD J.
Page 37 - The rapid development, as far as we can judge, of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery.