NEWS OF SPRING 



19 



Is it not exactly in this manner, by means of trifles, of 

 successive overhaulings and retouches, that human inventions 

 proceed? We have all, in the latest of our mechanical in- 

 dustries, followed the tiny, but continual improvements in 

 the sparking-plug, the carburetter, the clutch and the speed- 

 gear. It would really seem as though ideas came to the 

 flowers in the same way as to us. The flowers grope in the 

 same darkness, encounter the same obstacles, the same ill-will, 

 in the same unknown. They know the same laws, the same 

 disappointment, the same slow and difficult triumphs. They 

 would appear to possess our patience, our perseverance, our 

 self-love, the same varied degrees of intelligence, almost the 

 same hopes and the same ideals. They struggle, like our- 

 selves, against a great indifferent force that ends by assisting 

 them. Their inventive imagination not only follows the same 

 prudent and minute methods, the same tiring, narrow and 

 winding little paths : it also has unexpected leaps and bounds 

 that suddenly bring to perfection an uncertain discovery. It 

 is thus that a family of great inventors, among the Orchids, 

 a strange and rich American family, that of the Catasetida, 

 obeying a bold inspiration, abruptly altered a number of 



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