THE SECRET OF FLOWERS 



with blossoms. They were of no particular use; there was only 

 one man to see them." 



This same idea is again repeated in Emerson's beautiful 

 lines : 



THE RHODORA 



"In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes 

 I found the fresh rhodora in the woods. 

 Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook; 

 To please the desert and the sluggish brook: 

 The purple petals fallen in the pool, 

 Made the black waters with their beauty gay: 

 Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool. 

 And court the flower that cheapens his array. 

 Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why 

 This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky. 

 Dear, tell them that, if eyes were made for seeing. 

 Then beauty is its own excuse for being." 



It would seem never to have occurred to poet, editor, or 

 philosopher that the beautiful hues of flowers might be useful 

 to the plants producing them. 



It was a German pastor, Christian Conrad Sprengel, at the 

 close of the eighteenth century, who first pointed out the true 

 significance of conspicuous flowers. His book, now a botanical 

 classic, attracted but little attention; his publisher did not 

 even send him a copy of it, and in discouragement he did not 

 publish the second volume, but turned from the study of plants 

 to that of languages. The title of the work, The Secret of 

 Nature in the Form and Fertilization of Flowers Discovered, 

 affords us the pleasure of knowing that he rightly estimated 

 the importance of his observations. Sprengel clearly states, 

 as is now well established, that the bright hues of flowers serve 

 as signals to attract the attention of nectar-loving insects fly- 

 ing near by. He was led to this conclusion very fitly by the 



9 



