114 MY STUDIO NEIGHBORS 



"Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it 

 will one clay flower in a truth." The defects in 

 Sprengel's work were, after all, not actual defects. 

 The error lay simply in his interpretation of his 

 carefully noted facts. As Hermann Muller has 

 said, " Sprengel's investigations afford an example 

 of how even work that is rich in acute observa- 

 tion and happy interpretation may remain inoper- 

 ative if the idea at its foundation is defective." 

 What, then, was the flaw in Sprengel's work ? 

 Simply that he had seen but half the "secret" 

 which he claimed to have "discovered." Starting 

 to prove that insects fertilize the flowers, his care- 

 fully observed facts only served to demonstrate in 

 many cases the reverse — that insects could not fer- 

 tilize flowers in the manner he had declared. He 

 was met at every hand, for instance, by floral prob- 

 lems such as are shown at E and F, where the 

 pollen and the stigma in the same flower matured 

 at different periods; and even though he recog- 

 nized and admitted that the pollen must in many 

 cases be transferred from one flower to another, 

 he failed to divine that such was actually the 

 common vital plan involved. It may readily be 

 imagined that his great work precipitated an in- 

 tense and prolonged controversy , and incited 

 emulous investigation by the botanists of his 



