178 MY STUDIO NEIGHBORS 



This radical assumption of fertilization in the 

 individual flower, which lay at the base of Spren- 

 gel's theory, thus so completely exposed as false, 

 discredited his entire work. The good was con- 

 demned with the bad, and the noble volume was 

 lost in comparative oblivion only to be finally 

 resurrected and its full value and significance re- 

 vealed by the keen scientific insight of Darwin 

 (1859). From the new stand -point of evolution 

 through natural selection the facts in Sprengel's 

 work took on a most important significance. 

 Darwin now reaffirmed the Sprengel theory so 

 far as the necessity of the insect was concerned, 

 but showed that all those perplexing floral condi- 

 tions which had disproved Sprengel's assumption, 

 instead of having for their object the conveying 

 of pollen to the stigma of the same flower, implied 

 its transfer to the stigma of another, cross-fertili- 

 zation being the evident design, or evolved and 

 perpetuated advantage. 



This solution was made logical and tenable 

 only on the assumption that such evolved con- 

 ditions, insuring cross-fertilization, were of dis- 

 tinct advantage to the flower in the competitive 

 struggle for existence, and that all cross - fertil- 

 ized flowers were thus the final result of natural 

 selection. 



