Some of these types stand out with remarkable clearness, notably magnolia, willows, poplars, walnuts, birches, oaks, figs, sassafras and its relatives, the rosales, the pea family, the spurges, maples, grapes, linden, myrtle, ginseng, and some others. All these, and in not very different aspect from their modern representatives, have been found in the fossils of the different and usually more recent strata before the last Ice Age. But the total fossil record of even these well-known genera is only a fraction of their modern development, and we are constantly confronted with the apparent dilemma of accounting for a present wealth of forms based upon an obvious poverty of ancestry. While the whole race of flowering plants is certainly a new one, as such things are reckoned fossilwise, there has been a fecundity in the origin of new species among these lusty upstarts that is simply amazing. How that, in part at least, has been accomplished will be considered in the final section of this chapter. Not only among these present-day plants, but all through the story of the development of the plant kingdom, we have been reading and writing of the changes of form and structure, some of which have been of far-reaching consequences. It is clear enough that if new types of vegetation and different races of plants have come into being and so modified the complexion of the plant kingdom, those changes must have first arisen in individuals which had within them some capacity for change, and furthermore the ability to use the change to their advantage. While, as we have seen, the losses have been tremendous, no one, with even this brief history of their development in mind, can doubt that there has been progress toward our present perfection of plant life. 6. HOW PLANTS CHANGE THEIR CHARACTERS AND BECOME NEW SPECIES It was with something very different in mind than the changing of plant characters that Cardinal Newman once said: “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to change often.” And yet nothing better expresses the facts of plants’ ability to change and the results of it than this reply of a great churchman to critics who could not or would not understand the truth of his now famous reply. It is perhaps best to begin any discussion of the changes in plants by remembering a few simple facts regarding changes in ourselves. “Like father like son” is something more than an old saw which we repeat for centuries without stopping to think whether it is true or only half true. As with so many speeches of the sort, this is just precisely a half truth, for while sons are more apt to be like their fathers than other men, we all have within us the capacity, whether expressed or not, to change very considerably. In other words, all living things may be said to be a reflection or, perhaps better, the result of two divergent tendencies, one of which tends to make like produce like, and the other to produce something different.