196 NATURE'S TEACHINGS. 



place of brick, stone, and timber, and the result fully justified 

 the expectations even of the inventor. 



How a gardener suddenly developed into an architect remains 

 to be seen ; and, indeed, in this case the architecture was 

 the result of the gardening, or rather, of practical botany 

 applied to art. Some years before the invention of the Crystal 

 Palace, that magnificent plant, the Victoria Regia, had been 

 introduced into England. Its enormous leaves, with their 

 wonderful power of flotation, caused a great stir at the time, 

 and some of my readers may remember a sketch which was 

 engraved in the Illustrated London Neics, and which repre- 

 sented a little girl standing on one of these leaves as it floated 

 on the water. 



LEAF OF VICTORIA REGIA (REVERSED). CRYSTAL PALACE. 



Mr. Paxton saw how this power was obtained, and the result 

 was that he copied in iron the lines of the vegetable cellular 

 structure which gave such strength to the Victoria Regia leaf, 

 and became more eminent as an architect than he had been as 

 a gardener. The capabilities of the Crystal Palace had lain 

 latent for centuries, but the generalising eye of genius was 

 needed to detect it. A thousand men might have seen the 

 Victoria Regia leaf, and not thought very much of it ; but the 

 right man came at the right time, the most wonderful build- 

 ing in the world sprang up like the creation of a fairy dream, 

 and the obscure gardener became Sir Joseph Paxton. 



I have no doubt that thousands of similar revelations are at 

 present hidden in Nature, awaiting the eye of their revealer. 



Now we come to the principle of the Buttress, i.e. giving 

 support to the exterior, instead of the interior, and strengthen- 

 ing the walls by pushing them together, instead of pulling 

 them together. 



