THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION BEGINS 127 



materialistic, Herbert Spencer's is built up by an acute 

 and subtle analytical perception of all the analogous 

 facts in universal nature. It is a singular instance 

 of a crude and essentially unphilosophic conception 

 endeavouring to replace a finished and delicate philo- 

 sophical idea. 



Earlier still, in 1862, Darwin had published his 

 wonderful and fascinating book on the { Fertilisation of 

 Orchids.' It is delightful to contemplate the picture 

 of the unruffled naturalist, in the midst of that uni- 

 versal storm of ecclesiastical obloquy and scientific 

 enthusiasm which he had roused throughout Europe, 

 sitting down calmly in his Kentish conservatory to 

 watch the behaviour of catasetums and masdevallias, and 

 to work out the details of his chosen subject, with that 

 marvellous patience of which he was so great a master, 

 in the pettiest minutias of fertilisation as displayed 

 by a single highly developed family of plants. Who- 

 ever wishes to learn the full profundity of Darwin's 

 researches, into every point that he set himself to inves- 

 tigate, cannot do better than turn for a while to the 

 consideration of that exquisite treatise on one of the 

 quaintest fairylands of science. He will there learn 

 by what an extraordinary wealth of cunning devices 

 natural selection has ensured the due conveyance of 

 the fecundating pollen from stamens to stigmas within 

 the limits of a single group of vegetable organisms. 

 Here the fertilising mass is gummed automatically 

 between the eyes of the exploring bee, and then 

 bent round by the drying of its stalk so as to come in 

 contact with the stigmatic surface. There the pollen club 

 is jerked out elastically by a sensitive fibre, and actually 



