FACT AND THEORY 245 



He could not see that our plants are what they 

 are because they have grown up with the birds, 

 and the bees, and the winds to help them; and 

 that now, after all these centuries of uphill 

 struggle, man has been given to them as a part- 

 ner to free them from weakness and open new 

 doors of opportunity. 



He could not see that all of us, the birds, and 

 the bees, and the flowers, and we. ourselves, are 

 a part of the same onward-moving procession, 

 each helping the other to better things; nor 

 could many others of his time see it. 



And the botanists of that day, less than four 

 short decades ago, found their chief work in the 

 study and classification of dried and shriveled 

 plant mummies, whose souls had fled rather 

 than in the living, breathing forms, revealing 

 their life histories. 



They counted the stamens of a dried flower 

 without looking for the causes for those stamens ; 

 they measured and surveyed the length and 

 breadth of truth with never a thought of its 

 depth they charted its surface, as if never 

 realizing that it w T as a thing of three dimensions. 



And that is why those who had devoted their 

 lifetimes to counting stamens and classifying 

 shapes told me, through their writings, that a 

 cross might be made within species, but never 



