may fulfill its office. In such blossoms, and in the great majority of
flowers, the fertilization and consequent perpetuity of which are committed
to insects, the likelihood that much pollen may be left behind or lost in
the transit is sufficient reason for the apparent superfluity. So, too, the
greater economy in orchis-flowers is accounted for by the fact that the
pollen is packed in coherent masses, all attached to a common stalk, the end
of which is expanded into a sort of button, with a glutinous adhesive face
(like a bit of sticking-plaster), and this is placed exactly where the head
of a moth or butterfly will be pressed against it when it sucks nectar from
the flower, and so the pollen will be bodily conveyed from blossom to
blossom, with small chance of waste or loss. The floral world is full of
such contrivances; and while they exist the doctrine of purpose or final
cause is not likely to die out. Now, in the contrasted case, that of
pine-trees, the vast superabundance of pollen would be sheer waste if the
intention was to fertilize the seeds of the same tree, or if there were any
provision for insect-carriage; but with wide-breeding as the end, and the
wind which "bloweth where it listeth" as the means, no one is entitled to
declare that pine-pollen is in wasteful excess. The cheapness of
wind-carriage may be set against the overproduction of pollen.

Similar considerations may apply to the mould-fungi and other very low
organisms, with spores dispersed through the air in countless myriads, but
of which only an infinitesimal portion find opportunity for development.
The myriads perish. The exceptional one, falling into a fit medium, is
imagined by the Westminster Reviewer to argue design from the beneficial
provision it finds itself enjoying, in happy ignorance of the perishing or
latent multitude. But, in view of the large and important part they play
(as the producers of all fermentation and as the omnipresent
scavenger-police of Nature), no good ground appears for arguing either
wasteful excess or absence of design from the vast disparity between their