SPRENGEL'S DISCOVERY 



Even if there is no particular meaning, the "little western 

 flower " gives point and beauty to the lines. 



People only began to understand flowers about the year 

 1793, when Christian Conrad Sprengel, Rector of Spandau, 

 near Berlin, published a very interesting work. He had 

 discovered that the beauty of flowers and their colour and 

 shape were by no means intended solely to please human 

 eyes, but that they were designed to attract and allure the 

 eyes of insects. Before his time there had been many 

 guesses. Indeed, Theophrastus (bom 371 b.c, and often 

 mentioned in this work) seems to have quite well understood 

 why flowers produce pollen, and that the fruit would not set 

 and form seed imless pollen was carried to the female part of 

 the flower. He mentions that the Pistacio has both male 

 and female plants, and that Palms only form dates when the 

 pollen is carried to the female tree. This experiment with 

 the Date-palm was tried in 1592 by an Italian (Alpino) 

 in an Egyptian tour, and the Englishman, Jacob Bobart, 

 the Pole, Adam Zaluzianski (the latter in the same year) con- 

 firmed the general idea. Then in the year 1694 Rudolp 

 Jacob Camerarius, a German, carried on a few more experi- 

 ments, but no real definite advance was made until 1793, in 

 the very midst of the French Revolution.^ 



The great point of SprengePs discovery was in its being 

 an intelligible explanation of the reason why flowers have 

 bright colours, scent, and honey. At his time and indeed 

 for many years afterwards, botanists looked on the stamens, 

 petals, and other parts of the flower exactly in the way that 

 a stamp collector looks at punctures and postmarks, that is 

 without thinking about their meaning. Now we find that 



' The historical account by Bonnier, Cours de Botamque, is very 

 interesting and complete. 



69 



