THE WELCOMES OF THE FLOWERS 1 15 



time. Though a few of the more advanced of his 

 followers, among them Andrew Knight (1799), 

 Kohlreuter (1811), Herbert (1837), Gartner (1844), 

 clearly recognized the principle and foreshadowed 

 the later theory of cross -fertilization, it was not 

 until the inspired insight of Darwin, as voiced in 

 his " Origin of Species," contemplated these strange 

 facts and inconsistencies of Sprengel that their 

 full significance and actual value were discovered 

 and demonstrated, and his remarkable book, for- 

 gotten for seventy years, at last appreciated for 

 its true worth. Alas for the irony of fate ! Un- 

 der Darwin's interpretation the very " defects " 

 which had rendered Sprengel's work a failure 

 now became the absolute witness of a. deeper 

 truth which Sprengel had failed to discern. One 

 more short step and he had reached the goal. 

 But this last step was reserved for the later seer. 

 He took the fatal double problem of Sprengel 

 as shown at E and F, to express the consumma- 

 tion pictorially and by the simple drawing of a 

 line, as it were, as indicated between G and H, in- 

 stantly reconciled all the previous perplexities and 

 inconsistencies, thus demonstrating the funda- 

 mental plan involved in floral construction to be 

 not merely " insect fertilization," the fatal postulate 

 assumed by Sprengel, but cross- fertilization a 



