EVENING FLOWERS. 295 



feeds must very soon die out altogether ; for they 

 are dependent for their fertilization upon the 

 kind offices of their insect visitors, who could not 

 convey the pollen from one plant to another with- 

 out the intervention of these inconspicuous hut 

 useful little hairs. It is indeed a narrow view of 

 nature which regards it all as too exclusively de- 

 signed with a sole eye to the comforts and neces- 

 sities of the human race. Man, of course, forms 

 the heatl and crown of the whole visible creation ; 

 but he is, after all, only as it were the last and 

 greatest wheel in one vast and harmonious univer- 

 sal mechanism, every other wheel in which has 

 equally its appointed part to play in the system of 

 the cosmos. Each of these minor wheels, how- 

 ever inconspicuous to us, has its own cogs and 

 fittings, which enable it to work smoothly with 

 all the rest. The plant has its leaves and stem 

 and roots for its own purposes ; it has its bright 

 flower primarily to attract the insect visitors, and 

 only secondarily to gratify the human vision ; it 

 lias its fruit and seed originally for the continu- 

 ance of its own kind to future generations, and 

 incidentally only for our use and sustenance. In 

 its own way it is as well worthy of minute study 

 as the human body itself; and, when uiinutely 

 studied, it repays us well by disclosing at every 

 step new and hitherto unsuspected correlations 

 with all the rest of the animal and vegetable 



