Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  These trout here, however, differ from the salmon in one important particular beside their relative size, and that is that they are beautifully speckled in their mature form, instead of being merely silvery like the larger species. The origin of the pretty speckles is probably to be found in the constant selection by the fish of the most beautiful among their number as mates. Just as singing birds are in their fullest and clearest song at the nesting period, and just as many brilliant species only possess their gorgeous plumage while they are going through their courtship, and lose the decoration after the young brood is hatched, so the trout are most brightly coloured at spawning time, and become lank and dingy after the eggs have been safely deposited. The parent fish ascend to the head-waters of their native river during the autumn season to spawn, and then, their glory dimmed, they return down-stream to the deep pools, where they pass the winter sulkily, as if ashamed to show themselves in their dull and dusky suits. But when spring comes round once more, and flies again become abundant, the trout begin to move up-stream afresh, and soon fatten out to their customary size and brilliant colours. It might seem at first sight that creatures so humble as these little fish could hardly have sufficiently developed aesthetic tastes to prefer one mate above another on the score of beauty. But we must remember that every species is very sensitive to small points of detail in its own kind, and that the choice would only be exerted between mates generally very like one another, so that extremely minute differences must necessarily turn the scale in favour of one particular suitor rather than his rivals. Anglers know that trout are attracted by bright colours, that they can distinguish the different flies upon which they feed, and that artificial flies must accordingly be made at least into a rough semblance of the original insects. Some scientific fishermen even insist that it is no use offering them a brown drake at the time of year or the hour of day when they are naturally expecting a red spinner. Of course their sight is by no means so perfect as our own, but it probably includes a fair idea of form, and an acute perception of colour, while there is every reason to believe that all the trout family have a decided love of metallic glitter, such as that of silver or of the salmon’s scales. Mr. Darwin has shown that the little stickleback goes through an elaborate courtship, and I have myself watched trout which seemed to me as obviously love-making as any pair of turtle-doves I ever saw. In their early life salmon fry and young trout are almost quite indistinguishable, being both marked with blue patches (known as ‘finger-marks’) on their sides, which are remnants of the ancestral colouring once common to the whole race. But as they grow up, their later-acquired tastes begin to produce a divergence, due originally to this selective preference of certain beautiful mates; and the adult salmon clothes himself from head to tail in sheeny silver, while the full-grown trout decks his sides with the beautiful speckles which have earned him his popular name. Countless generations of slight differences, selected from time to time by the strongest and handsomest fish, have sufficed at length to bring about these conspicuous variations from the primitive type, which the young of both races still preserve.

  DODDER AND BROOMRAPE.

  This afternoon, strolling through the under-cliff, I have come across two quaint and rather uncommon flowers among the straggling brushwood. One of them is growing like a creeper around the branches of this overblown gorse-bush. It is the lesser dodder, a pretty clustering mass of tiny pale pink convolvulus blossoms. The stem consists of a long red thread, twining round and round the gorse, and bursting out here and there into thick bundles of beautiful bell-shaped flowers. But where are the leaves? You may trace the red threads through their labyrinthine windings up and down the supporting gorse-branches all in vain: there is not a leaf to be seen. As a matter of fact, the dodder has none. It is one of the most thorough-going parasites in all nature. Ordinary green-leaved plants live by making starches for themselves out of the carbonic acid in the air, under the influence of sunlight; but the dodder simply fastens itself on to another plant, sends down rootlets or suckers into its veins, and drinks up sap stored with ready-made starches or other foodstuffs, originally destined by its host for the supply of its own growing leaves, branches, and blossoms. It lives upon the gorse just as parasitically as the little green aphides live upon our rose-bushes. The material which it uses up in pushing forth its long thread-like stem and clustered bells is so much dead loss to the unfortunate plant on which it has fixed itself.

  Old-fashioned books tell us that the mistletoe is a perfect parasite, while the dodder is an imperfect one; and I believe almost all botanists will still repeat the foolish saying to the present day. But it really shows considerable haziness as to what a true parasite is. The mistletoe is a plant which has taken, it is true, to growing upon other trees. Its very viscid berries are useful for attaching the seeds to the trunk of the oak or the apple; and there it roots itself into the body of its host. But it soon produces real green leaves of its own, which contain the ordinary chlorophyll found in other leaves, and help it to manufacture starch, under the influence of sunlight, on its own account. It is not, therefore, a complete drag upon the tree which it infests; for though it takes sap and mineral food from the host, it supplies itself with carbon, which is after all the important thing for plant-life. Dodder, however, is a parasite pure and simple. Its seeds fall originally upon the ground, and there root themselves at first like those of any other plant. But, as it grows, its long twining stem begins to curl for support round some other and stouter stalk. If it stopped there, and then produced leaves of its own, like the honeysuckle and the clematis, there would be no great harm done: and the dodder would be but another climbing plant the more in our flora. However, it soon insidiously repays the support given it by sending down little bud-like suckers, through which it draws up nourishment from the gorse or clover on which it lives. Thus it has no need to develop leaves of its own; and it accordingly employs all its stolen material in sending forth matted thread-like stems and bunch after bunch of bright flowers. As these increase and multiply, they at last succeed in drawing away all the nutriment from the supporting plant, which finally dies under the constant drain, just as a horse might die under the attacks of a host of leeches. But this matters little to the dodder, which has had time to be visited and fertilised by insects, and to set and ripen its numerous seeds. One species, the greater dodder, is thus parasitic upon hops and nettles; a second kind twines round flax; and the third, which I have here under my eyes, mainly confines its dangerous attentions to gorse, clover, and thyme. All of them are, of course, deadly enemies to the plants they infest.

  How the dodder acquired this curious mode of life it is not difficult to see. By descent it is a bind-weed, or wild convolvulus, and its blossoms are in the main miniature convolvulus blossoms still. Now, all bind-weeds, as everybody knows, are climbing plants, which twine themselves round stouter stems for mere physical support This is in itself a half-parasitic habit, because it enables the plant to dispense with the trouble of making a thick and solid stem for its own use. But just suppose that any bind-weed, instead of merely twining, were to put forth here and there little tendrils, something like those of the ivy, which managed somehow to grow into the bark of the host, and so naturally graft themselves to its tissues. In that case the plant would derive nutriment from the stouter stem with no expense to itself, and it might naturally be expected to grow strong and healthy, and hand down its peculiarities to its descendants. As the leaves would thus be rendered needless, they would first become very much reduced in size, and would finally disappear altogether, according to the universal custom of unnecessary organs. So we should get at length a leafless plant, with numerous flowers and seeds, just like the dodder. Parasites, in fact, whether animal or vegetable, always end by becoming mere reproductive sacs, mechanisms for the simple elaboration of eggs or seeds. This is just what has happened to the dodder before me.

  The other queer plant here is a broomrape. It consists of a tall, somewhat faded-looking stem, upright
instead of climbing, and covered with brown or purplish scales in the place of leaves. Its flowers resemble the scales in colour, and the dead-nettle in shape. It is, in fact, a parasitic dead-nettle, a trifle less degenerate as yet than the dodder. This broomrape has acquired somewhat the same habits as the other plant, only that it fixes itself on the roots of clover or broom, from which it sucks nutriment by its own root, as the dodder does by its stem-suckers. Of course it still retains in most particulars its original characteristics as a dead-nettle; it grows with their upright stem and their curiously shaped flowers, so specially adapted for fertilisation by insect visitors. But it has naturally lost its leaves, for which it has no further use, and it possesses no chlorophyll, as the mistletoe does. Yet it has not probably been parasitic for as long a time as the dodder, since it still retains a dwindling trace of its leaves in the shape of dry purply scales, something like those of young asparagus shoots. These leaves are now, in all likelihood, actually undergoing a gradual atrophy, and we may fairly expect that in the course of a few thousand years they will disappear altogether. At present, however, they remain very conspicuous by their colour, which is not green, owing to the absence of chlorophyll, but is due to the same pigment as that of the blossoms. This generally happens with parasites, or with that other curious sort of plants known as saprophytes, which live upon decaying living matter in the mould of forests. As they need no green leaves, but have often inherited leafy structures of some sort, in a more or less degenerate condition, from their self-supporting ancestors, they usually display most beautiful colours in their stems and scales, and several of them rank amongst our handsomest hot-house plants. Even the dodder has red stalks. Their only work in life being to elaborate the materials stolen from their host into the brilliant pigments used in the petals for attracting insect fertilisers, they pour this same dye into the stems and scales, which thus render them still more conspicuous to the insects’ eyes. Moreover, as they use their whole material in producing flowers, many of these are very large and handsome; one huge Sumatran species has a blossom which measures three feet across. On the other hand, their seeds are usually small and very numerous. Thousands of seeds must fall on unsuitable places, spring up, and waste all their tiny store of nourishment, find no host at hand on which to fasten themselves, and so die down for want of food. It is only by producing a few thousand young plants for every one destined ultimately to survive that dodders and broomrapes manage to preserve their types at all.

  DOG’S MERCURY AND PLANTAIN.

  The hedge and bank in Haye Lane are now a perfect tangled mass of creeping plants, among which I have just picked out a queer little three-cornered flower, hardly known even to village children, but christened by our old herbalists ‘dog’s mercury.’ It is an ancient trick of language to call coarser or larger plants by the specific title of some smaller or cultivated kind, with the addition of an animal’s name. Thus we have radish and horse-radish, chestnut and horse-chestnut, rose and dog-rose, parsnip and cow-parsnip, thistle and sow-thistle. On the same principle, a somewhat similar plant being known as mercury, this perennial weed becomes dog’s mercury. Both, of course, go back to some imaginary medicinal virtue in the herb which made it resemble the metal in the eyes of old-fashioned practitioners.

  Dog’s mercury is one of the oddest English flowers I know. Each blossom has three small green petals, and either several stamens, or else a pistil, in the centre. There is nothing particularly remarkable in the flower being green, for thousands of other flowers are green and we never notice them as in any way unusual. In fact, we never as a rule notice green blossoms at all. Yet anybody who picked a piece of dog’s mercury could not fail to be struck by its curious appearance. It does not in the least resemble the inconspicuous green flowers of the stinging-nettle, or of most forest trees: it has a very distinct set of petals which at once impress one with the idea that they ought to be coloured. And so indeed they ought: for dog’s mercury is a degenerate plant which once possessed a brilliant corolla and was fertilised by insects, but which has now fallen from its high estate and reverted to the less advanced mode of fertilisation by the intermediation of the wind. For some unknown reason or other this species and all its relations have discovered that they get on better by the latter and usually more wasteful plan than by the former and usually more economical one. Hence they have given up producing large bright petals, because they no longer need to attract the eyes of insects; and they have also given up the manufacture of honey, which under their new circumstances would be a mere waste of substance to them. But the dog’s mercury still retains a distinct mark of its earlier insect-attracting habits in these three diminutive petals. Others of its relations have lost even these, so that the original floral form is almost completely obscured in their case. The spurges are familiar English roadside examples, and their flowers are so completely degraded that even botanists for a long time mistook their nature and analogies.

  The male and female flowers of dog’s mercury have taken to living upon separate plants. Why is this? Well, there was no doubt a time when every blossom had both stamens and pistil, as dog-roses and buttercups always have. But when the plant took to wind fertilisation it underwent a change of structure. The stamens on some blossoms became aborted, while the pistil became aborted on others. This was necessary in order to prevent self-fertilisation; for otherwise the pollen of each blossom, hanging out as it does to the wind, would have been very liable to fall upon its own pistil. But the present arrangement obviates any such contingency, by making one plant bear all the male flowers and another plant all the female ones. Why, again, are the petals green? I think because dog’s mercury would be positively injured by the visits of insects. It has no honey to offer them, and if they came to it at all, they would only eat up the pollen itself. Hence I suspect that those flowers among the mercuries which showed any tendency to retain the original coloured petals would soon get weeded out, because insects would eat up all their pollen, thus preventing them from fertilising others; while those which had green petals would never be noticed and so would be permitted to fertilise one another after their new fashion. In fact, when a blossom which has once depended upon insects for its fertilisation is driven by circumstances to depend upon the wind, it seems to derive a positive advantage from losing all those attractive features by which its ancestors formerly allured the eyes of bees or beetles.

  Here, again, on the roadside is a bit of plantain. Everybody knows its flat rosette of green leaves and its tall spike of grass-like blossom, with long stamens hanging out to catch the breeze. Now plantain is a case exactly analogous to dog’s mercury. It is an example of a degraded blossom. Once upon a time it was a sort of distant cousin to the veronica, that pretty sky-blue speedwell which abounds among the meadows in June and July. But these particular speedwells gave up devoting themselves to insects and became adapted for fertilisation by the wind instead. So you must look close at them to see at all that the flowering spike is made up of a hundred separate little four-rayed blossoms, whose pale and faded petals are tucked away out of sight flat against the stem. Yet their shape and arrangement distinctly recall the beautiful veronica, and leave one in little doubt as to the origin of the plant. At the same time a curious device has sprung up which answers just the same purpose as the separation of the male and female flowers on the dog’s mercury. Each plantain blossom has both stamens and pistils, but the pistils come to maturity first, and are fertilised by pollen blown to them from some neighbouring spike. Their feathery plumes are admirably adapted for catching and utilising any stray golden grain which happens to pass that way. After the pistils have faded, the stamens ripen, and hang out at the end of long waving filaments, so as to discharge all their pollen with effect. On each spike of blossoms the lower flowerets open first; and so, if you pick a half-blown spike, you will see that all the stamens are ripe below, and all the pistils above. Were the opposite arrangement to occur, the pollen would fall from the stamens to the lower flowers of t
he same stalk; but as the pistils below have always been fertilised and withered before the stamens ripen, there is no chance of any such accident and its consequent evil results. Thus one can see clearly that the plantain has become wholly adapted to wind-fertilisation, and as a natural effect has all but lost its bright-coloured corolla.