no STATD POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Late in the i8th century, Christian Conrad Sprengel, a Ger- 

 man scientist, given as much to reflection as to observation^ 

 found that there were hundreds of cases to which the Linnsean 

 hypothesis would not apply. In many flowers where the sta- 

 mens and pistils matured at the same time, the two sets of 

 organs were separated by notable intervals of space across which 

 the pollen could not pass unassisted. After long study he 

 announced his startling discovery that flowers are fertilized by 

 insects, that insects in seeking the nectar, brush off the pollen 

 and convey it to the stigma. While this author was thus the 

 first to call attention to the role of insects in fertilizing flowers, 

 yet other students were quick to note its importance and to 

 find that there were many problems in plant fertilization to 

 which Sprengel's explanation could not be satisfactorily applied. 

 In some blossoms the anthers ripened and discharged pollen 

 days before the pistils matured. In others the pistils were fully 

 developed and the stigmas wide open days in advance of the 

 maturity of the anthers. These obvious difficulties were sufficient 

 to prevent the general adoption of Sprengel's ideas, and his work 

 became forgotten in the 70 years that elapsed before the era 

 of Darwin's labors in this field. The master-mind of Charles 

 Darwin at once grasped the contradictory conditions which had 

 seemed to refute Sprengel's theory, and drawing as it were a 

 bee line between the flower with mature stamens and the 

 one with mature pistils, he cleared up the mystery and enunciated 

 that great law, "Nature abhors perpetual self-fertilization." 

 Farther than that, he showed that flowers generally were 

 adapted to secure cross-fertilization by aid of insects either 

 through a difference in the time of ripening of the essential 

 organs, or through the development of special structures. 



For this work of cross-fertilization, nature has provided the 

 most wondrous mechanisms, many of which we may study and 

 admire with a minimum amount of effort. They may be found 

 in every orchard ; they may be studied in every pasture ; every 

 woodland exhibits them ; and each garden spot numbers them 

 by the score. Their novelty attracts, instructs and delights, 

 and the more they are studied, the greater becomes our admira- 

 tion and the stronger the spell of their witchery over our senses. 



To appeal to the varying fancies of insects, the delights of 

 color, odor or flavor are most lavishly offered. Housewives 



