It should be noted that not all the candelabra-trees live in symbiosis with ants, and so secure a means of defence against the leaf-cutters. Schimper found in the primitive forests of South America several species of _Cecropia_ which never had ants in the chambers of their hollow stem. But these species did not exhibit the nutritive cushions at the base of the leaf-stalk; these contrivances for attracting and retaining the presence of partner ants were altogether absent. Indeed, only one species, _Cecropia peltata_, has produced these peculiar structures, and, as they are of no _direct_ use to the tree, we must say that it has produced them only for the ants. Here, again, natural selection must have gradually brought about the development of these nutritive cushions, though as yet we do not know what the beginnings of the process may have been. In no case can the origin of these cushions be referred to any direct influence of the environmental conditions. We may now pass to the association of two species of plants, of which the lichens furnish the best-known and probably most complete illustration. Till about twenty years ago the lichens, which in so many diverse forms clothe the bark of trees, the stones, and the rocks, were regarded as simple plants like the flowering plants, the ferns, or the mosses; and many lichenologists occupied themselves with the exact systematic distinction of about a thousand species, each of which could be as well and exactly classified, according to form, colour, habitat, and minute structure, as any other kind of plant. Then De Bary and Schwendener discovered that the lichens were made up of two kinds of plants, fungi and algæ, so intimately associated with and adapted to one another, that on coming together they always assume the same specific form. [Illustration: FIG. 38. A fragment of a Lichen (_Ephebe kerneri_), magnified 450 times. _a_, the green alga-cells. _P_, the fungoid filaments. After Kerner.] The framework, and therefore the largest part, and the one which determines the form of a lichen, is due to the fungus (Fig. 38). Colourless threads of fungus ramify in a definite manner according to the species of fungus, and in the network of spaces left by this ramification green alga-cells (_a_) lie singly, or in rows, or groups. The fungus is propagated by multitudes of minute spores, which it produces periodically, and these are disseminated in the air by the bursting of the sporangia and are carried away by the wind in the form of fine dust; the alga multiplies simply by continual division into two, but it also, like the whole lichen, can survive desiccation, and, after falling to pieces, is likewise carried through the air as microscopic dust.