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MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



The botanists have amassed an enormous store of infor- 

 mation about plants, their structure, their functions, their 

 distribution. Watched through the microscope in all the 

 mutations of growth and reproduction and recorded in each 

 versatile adaptation to the changes of their surroundings, 

 these lilies of the field furnish exhaustless opportunities for 

 modern students. 



But, of course, to the Galileans who first heard the 

 Sermon on the Mount, the material so abundantly provided 

 by the histologists and physiologists and palaeontologists was 

 unknown. Yet so far as the principles, the basic facts for 

 reasoning, are concerned, those Galileans were not much 

 inferior to ourselves when they came to study the chief 

 lesson of the flowers. 



True, we have been shown a thousand conformations of a 

 plant to its circumstances where they knew only one ; but 

 that one settled the question. We see quaint markings, 

 "bands, checks, spots, reticulations, grooves, punctures " 

 in pollen grains not visible to the naked eye; but there 

 were plenty of shapes and shadings for any one to look 

 at two thousand years ago. We have discovered groups 

 of fairy-like structures in the slime of ponds ; but Peter 

 and John could behold the grace and verdure of a country- 

 side. 



After all, modern science has only enormously multiplied 

 the examples, and continued the rules of our immediate 

 vicinity into both those infinities which we scan through 

 our optic glasses, — it is matter and force and order every- 

 where. Consider the stars, consider the diatoms, consider 

 the lilies, — it is all the same; only the stars are far away, 

 the diatoms are diflicult to discern, but the lilies are near 

 and conspicuous. We do not need telescope or microscope 

 to find the main facts of the universe. 



Wonder and beauty our own courtiers are, 

 Pressing to catch our gaze, 

 And out of obvious ways 

 Ne'er wandering far. 



