Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 | Page 4

that bees carry pollen from flower to flower, and that
eggs of marine animals are often carried long distances in the stomachs
of aquatic birds. A very curious instance of this kind, showing how
vegetable species may be diffused by means which no botanist,
however acute, would be likely to think of, is mentioned by Mr. Alfred
Smee, who states that, attached to the skin of a panther recently shot in
India, were found numerous seeds, each of which had two perfect
hooks, manifestly designed to attach themselves to foreign bodies. As
the panther moved about it collected the seeds on the skin and carried
them about wherever it went; but when it rubbed against the shrubs, it
of necessity brushed some off, and thus distributed them. One of the
seeds produced a handsome plant, and beautiful clusters of tubular
flowers. It was immediately recognized to be the Martynia diandra--a
plant which, although introduced into England as far back as 1731, has
scarcely ever been cultivated, although it has been commented on by
botanists and other writers.
* * * * *

FOR POSTERITY--A SUGGESTION.
The Irish gentleman who declined to aid an enterprise for the benefit of
posterity, remarking that posterity had never done anything for him,
was, after all the sport made of him, no unfair representative of the bulk
of mankind. There is talk enough about doing great things for the
advantage of future ages, but the real motive is apt to be something
very different. To perpetuate their own name or fame, men or nations
often set up lasting monuments, and sometimes unintentionally convey
thereby to after times a few more or less instructive indications of the
artistic or industrial skill of their day and generation. To further their
own immediate ends, or to secure some benefit to their immediate
descendants, men frequently undertake great material enterprises, and

sometimes the work so done remains for ages the source of perennial
good. But very rarely, if ever, can it be said that any work of man was
undertaken solely, or even chiefly, for the benefit of posterity--more
rarely still, for remote posterity.
Hence it happens that we owe far more to accident, to fire, rapine,
volcanic outbursts, and the protecting care of desolation, for the
knowledge we have of times long past, than to any intentional legacies
of art or learning left us by the men of those times. The lost and
abandoned tools, weapons, and ornaments of the stone age are all that
we have to tell us of the childhood of humanity. Had no fiery disasters
ever overtaken the pile-dwellers of the Swiss lakes, we should probably
have never heard of such a people.
To the mud and ashes of Vesuvius, rather than to the historians of the
Roman Empire, we owe the best of our knowledge of how Roman
cities looked and Roman citizens lived eighteen hundred years ago. In
the fragments of a terra cotta library, buried in the ruins of a royal
palace, we find almost our only records of the arts and sciences of
ancient Assyria. Under the ash heaps of a forgotten age, in Cyprus,
Cesnola finds the only known vestiges of a primitive civilization,
reaching far back into the domain of mythology. Thanks to the
destroyers of Troy and Mycenæ, and the protective care of temporary
oblivion, Schliemann is now able to verify tradition and lay before an
astonished and delighted world numerous precious relics of heroic ages
hitherto remembered only in song.
Who can estimate the value of these and similar findings to us--the
value of the revelations they bring of man's condition in those remote
ages? Who can say how many or how few the ages will be ere the time
comes when the antiquaries of the future will be rejoicing over equally
fragmentary vestiges of the doings and possessions of our day?
On the other hand, who can estimate the value of the knowledge lost
beyond hope of recovery, or the checks to human progress experienced,
in the repeated wiping out, so to speak, of the higher races and the
civilizations they embodied? And who can say that similar disasters
may not come again and again to humanity?

Suppose a pestilence peculiarly fatal to the white race should fall upon
the world to-day, crippling, perhaps exterminating, the now dominant
civilized nations; how long would the material elements of our science
and art or general culture remain with power to enlighten the barbarous
tribes that would inherit the earth? Human progress has more than once
been set back for centuries by such natural or unnatural causes, leaving
the sites of once splendid civilizations to be overrun with barbaric
hordes knowing nothing of the better times that went before.
Suppose, again, that, by one of those geologic changes so