Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

408 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP.
that kind of mite is confined to a higher and cooler
zone, and never descends to the warm zone of the
Red Bark.
Let it be observed that these scrobicules, although
I have no doubt of their origin by insect-agency, are
quite as good and permanent a botanical character
as many others as the sacciferous leaves of Tococa,
for example. [What a vast length of time, com-
pared with man's brief life, it must have taken to
on the latter
impress a character of permanence
character and render it hereditary !
Probably
a
period far longer than those we choose to designate
"historical" or "bronze" or "stone." The in-
imitable researches of Mr. Darwin have rendered it
(to my mind) almost certain that many of the deviations
from symmetry in the form and direction of
the parts of a flower have been brought about by
the direct mechanical agency of insects ; and that
the origin of every obliquity, unequal-sidedness, and
so forth, in any organ of a plant, is to be sought in
the action of forces not only internal, but also
external to the plant itself.] In this wonderful
'
life," which exists only through perpetual change,
every equilibrium is unstable, and even what we call
"permanence" is but a transitory state.
In fine, the list of structures which I have above
assigned to Ant-agency might no doubt be very
much extended, and perhaps more satisfactorily
classified. I have described only what I have seen
with my own eyes and noted down on the spot ;
and
corroborative specimens of all the plants mentioned
exist in the Royal Herbarium at Kew, by means of
which the accuracy of my account of the structures
inhabited by ants may at any time be tested.