XXVI. 



EVENING FLOWERS. 



It is one of the strong points of the new school 

 of naturalists which has grown up around us dur- 

 ing the last ten or fifteen years that they are no 

 longer content, like tlieir predecessors, with merely 

 stating how such and such an animal or plant is 

 fashioned here or there in such and such a particular 

 manner, but that they always ask themselves the 

 further and far more important question, Why is 

 it fashioned just so, and not otherwise? Every 

 band or belt of color on a butterfly's wing, every 

 fold or lobe of foliage in tree, or shrub, or weed, 

 or creeper, every crest or knot of plumage on 

 parrot or humming-bird, must surely have its due 

 and sufficient purpose in the great balanced econ- 

 omy of Nature. As the German observer Sprengel 

 justly put it, when he was led to his marvellous 

 investigations into the hues and shapes of flowers 

 by the simple observation of a few small hairs on 

 the petals of a wild geranium, "The wise Author 

 of Nature would certainly not have created even 

 u hair in vain." Working down from this lumi- 

 nous original thought, Si)rengel gradually went 



- 2ij6 



