1900.] KSSAYS. 37 



to myself — active, eDergetic men and women, who will carry the 

 principles of the society into every home throughout their juris- 

 diction. 



I have learned some wonderful things in niv garden. I do 

 not know whether you know it, friends, but I am a clergyman, 

 and naturally enough I studied theology years ago ; but I be- 

 lieve that some of the best theology I ever acquired I picked up 

 in my flower-garden. I don't want to preach a sermon to you 

 this afternoon, but I am just talking and saying things that 

 came into my nature, but we are all concerned in a measure 

 about what Darwin called the " origin of the species"; just that 

 part of it I will touch upon, because I have learned something 

 worth learning from my flowers. I will show and illustrate 

 what I mean with that very hackneyed part of it, or rather the 

 illustration used by Darwin of the orchid and the moth. 



You know that he tells us of one of the orchids with a very 

 long tube, saying that in the past the tube was very short and, 

 therefore, accessible to the moths : the orchid began to lengthen 

 itself at the tube ; then the moths had to lengthen their antenna 1 , 

 so they could extract the honey, and it became a race between 

 the insect and the flower — the flower trying to make a longer 

 tube and the moth trying to make longer antennae, so it should 

 not be starved when it wanted a meal. That is the explanation 

 that Darwin gave when he was asked how an orchid obtained a 

 tube so long. And so, the thought came into my mind that if 

 this could be true, then the processes of nature were the most 

 absurd conceivable ; I do not believe Nature is half so foolish 

 as that, and in all I can find out about her methods, she tries to 

 simplify things, not to make them more complicated ; to make 

 life easier, not more difficult, — instead of lengthening the tube 

 of the orchid she would have shortened it so as to have secured 

 more general strength. 



In my garden, I find that it is a fact, and in my studies of 

 floriculture I learn that we are confined within certain distinct 

 limits and we cannot go beyond them. We cannot make a 

 genus, no matter how much we try. We can develop different 

 species in one family, but when we come to that defined line 



