STARTING POINTS. 51 



had been impressed, and away the giant intel- 

 lect started on another long and weary, but suc- 

 cessful, search after truth. Mr. W. Marshall 

 knew that in the mountains of Cumberland 

 many insects adhered to the leaves of Pin- 

 guicula; he told Darwin, and Darwin told the 

 world. 1 Mr. Holland's statement that water 

 insects are often found imprisoned in the 

 bladders of Utricularia is interesting, chiefly 

 because it led Darwin to investigate the 

 genus. 2 



The most fertile suggestions, however, came 

 to him from the facts brought out by his own 

 work. He did not record the hundredth part 

 of the tentative notions that entered his mind; 

 but many of the most important and lasting 

 had their rise in what to most other men is the 

 refuse heap of curious and exceptional little 

 facts. Perhaps one of the noblest lessons he 

 left to the world is this, which to him 

 amounted to a profound, almost religious con- 

 viction, that every fact in nature, no matter 

 how insignificant, every stripe of color, every 

 tint of flowers, the length of an orchid's nec- 

 tary, unusual height in a plant, all the infinite 

 variety of apparently insignificant things, is 



1 Insectivorous Plants, p. 369. 



2 Ibid., p. 395. 



