Preface 



moths, or humming birds about others, each visitor choosing the 

 restaurant most to his liking? With what infinite pains the 

 wants of each guest are catered to ! How relentlessly are pilferers 

 punished ! The endless devices of the more ambitious flowers 

 to save their species from degeneracy by close inbreeding through 

 fertilization with their own pollen, alone prove the operation of 

 Mind through them. How plants travel, how they send seeds 

 abroad in the world to found new colonies, might be studied 

 with profit by Anglo-Saxon expansionists. Do vice and virtue 

 exist side by side in the vegetable world also ? Yes, and every 

 sinner is branded as surely as was Cain. The dodder, Indian 

 pipe, broom-rape, and beech-drops wear the floral equivalent of 

 the striped suit and the shaved head. Although claiming most 

 respectable and exalted kinsfolk, they are degenerates not far 

 above the fungi. In short, this is a universe that we live in ; and 

 all that share the One Life are one in essence, for natural law is 

 spiritual law. "Through Nature to God," flowers show a way 

 to the scientist, lacking faith. 



Although it has been stated by evolutionists for many years 

 that in order to know the flowers, their insect relationships must 

 first be understood, it is believed that " Nature's Garden " is the 

 first American work to explain them in any considerable number 

 of species. Dr. Asa Gray, William Hamilton Gibson, Clarence 

 Moores Weed, and Miss Maud Going in their delightful books 

 or lectures have shown the interdependence of a score or more 

 of different blossoms and their insect visitors. Hidden away 

 in the proceedings of scientific societies' technical papers are the 

 invaluable observations of such men as Dr. William Trelease 

 of Wisconsin and Professor Charles Robertson of Illinois. To 

 the latter, especially, I am glad to acknowledge my indebted- 

 ness. Sprengel, Darwin, Miiller, Delpino, and Lubbock, among 

 others, have given the world classical volumes on European 

 flora only, but showing a vast array of facts which the theory of 

 adaptation to insects alone correlates and explains. That the 

 results of their illumining researches should be so slow in enlight- 

 ening the popular mind can be due only to the technical, scien- 

 tific language used in setting them forth, language as foreign 

 to the average reader as Chinese, and not to be deciphered by the 

 average student, either, without the help of a glossary. These 

 writings, as well as the vast array of popular books — ^too many for 

 individual mention — have been freely consulted after studies made 

 afield. 



To Sprengel belongs the glory of first exalting flowers above 

 the level of mere botanical specimens. After studying the wild 

 geranium he became convinced, as he wrote in 1787, that "the wise 

 Author of Nature has not made even a single hair without a defi- 

 nite design." A hundred years before, one, Nehemias Grew, had 

 said that it was necessary for pollen to reach the stigma of a flowed 



W 



