AN estimate: of DARWIN. 



Ml 



though in j^art generally presentable in the shape of morphology — are 

 mainly, like the higher mathematics, unintelligible except to those who 

 make them a subject of serious study. They are especially so when 

 presented in Mr. Brown's manner. Perhaps no naturalist ever re- 

 corded the results of his investigations in fewer words and with 

 greater precision than Robert Brown : certainly no one ever took 

 more pains to state nothing beyond the precise point in question. In- 

 deed, we have sometimes fancied that he preferred to enwrap rather 

 than to explain his meaning ; to put it into such a form that, unless 

 you follow Solomon's injunction and dig for the wisdom as for hid 

 treasure, you may hardly apprehend it until you have found it all out 

 for yourself, when you will have the satisfaction of perceiving that 

 Mr. Brown not only knew all about it, but had put it upon record 

 long before. Very different from this is the way in which Mr. Dar- 

 win takes his readers into his confidence, freely displays to them the 

 sources of his information and the working of his mind, and even 

 shares with them all his doubts and misgivings, while in a clear and 

 full exposition he sets forth the reasons wliich have guided him to his 

 conclusions. These you may hesitate or decline to adopt, but you 

 feel sure that they have been presented with perfect fairness ; and, if 

 you think of arguments against them, you may be confident that they 

 have all been duly considered before. 



The sagacity which characterizes these two naturalists is seen in 

 their success in finding decisive instances, and in their sure insight 

 into the meaning of things. As an instance of the latter on Mr. Dar- 

 win's part, and a justification of our venture to compare him with the 

 facile princeps hotcmicorum^ we will, in conclusion, allude to the 

 single instance in which they took the same subject in hand. In his 

 papers on the organs and modes of fecundation in Orchidese and As- 

 clepiadeoe, Mr. Brown refers more than once to C. K. Sprengel's almost 

 forgotten work, shows how the structure of the flowers in these orders 

 largely requires the agency of insects for their fecundation, and is 

 aware that " in Asclepiadeae . . . the insect so readily passes from one 

 corolla to another that it not unfrequently visits every flower of the 

 umbel." He must also have contemplated the transport of pollen from 

 plant to plant by wind and insects, and we know from another source 

 that he looked upon Sprengel's ideas as far from fantastic. Yet, instead 

 of taking the single forward step which now seems so obvious, he even 

 hazarded the conjecture that the insect-forms of some Orchideous flow- 

 ers are intended to deter rather than to attract insects. And so the 

 explanation of all these and other extraordinary structures, as well as 

 of the arrangement of blossoms in general, and even the very mean- 

 ing and need of sexual propagation, were left to be supplied by Mr. 

 Darwin. The aphorism "Nature abhors a vacuum " is a characteristic 

 specimen of the Science of the middle ages. The aphorism " Xature 

 abhors close fertilization," and the demonstration of the principle. 



