106 LIFE OF 



Darwin impresses forcibly on his readers the endless 

 diversity of structures, and the prodigality of resources dis- 

 played for gaining the same end, the fertilisation of one 

 flower by pollen from another plant. " The more I study 

 nature," he says, "the more I become impressed with 

 ever-increasing force that the contrivances and beautiful 

 adaptations slowly acquired through each part occasionally 

 varying in a slight degree . . . transcend in an incom- 

 parable manner the contrivances and adaptations which 

 the most fertile imagination of man could invent. 1 ' 

 Finally he concludes : " It is hardly an exaggeration to 

 say that nature tells us, in the most emphatic manner, 

 that she abhors perpetual self-fertilisation " ; and thus was 

 announced a new doctrine in botany. A second much- 

 improved edition of this book appeared in 1877. 



In 1864, in presenting the Copley medal of the Royal 

 Society to the author of the " Origin of Species," Major- 

 General Sabine, the President, entered into a full de- 

 scription of the merits of his works, " stamped through- 

 out with the impress of the closest attention to minute 

 details and accuracy of observation, combined with large 

 powers of generalisation." The award, while highly eulo- 

 gising the " Origin," was not however based upon it, but 

 on the more recent botanical writings. " The Fertilisa- 

 tion of Orchids" was described as perhaps 'the most 

 masterly treatise on any branch of vegetable physiology 

 that had ever appeared; and the fact was justly empha- 

 sised that all Darwin's botanical discoveries had been 

 obtained by the study of some of the most familiar and 

 conspicuous of our native plants, and some of the best- 

 known and easily-procured cultivated exotics. 



