INTRODUCTION xxi 



that will push their roots spontaneously into the soil, cast 

 off their white porous envelopes and thrive upon the food 

 obtained direct from Mother Earth. 



It was the poet Goethe who in his youthful pursuit of 

 botany proposed the theory that each circle of the flower, 

 the pistils, the stamens, the petals and the sepals, were 

 but modified forms of leaves, which obeyed the great econ- 

 omic impulse of the universe and had settled down to a scheme 

 of division of labour. 



The florists, reversing the order of nature by giving the 

 plants unwonted luxuries such as even temperature and 

 excessive food, have caused them to turn back to their 

 former states, and we can find them in the double state going 

 through all the stages of metamorphosis. Roses will show 

 every, grade from petal to stamen, and occasionally the whole 

 blossom reverts back to a tuft of green leaves. 



If such metamorphoses are possible, it is not hard to see 

 how the various peculiarly shaped flowers owe their irregular 

 form to the combination or modification of their stamens 

 or petals. 



"From the simplest and regular type of flowers," to 

 quote Mr. Gibson's own words, "as in the buttercup, we 

 pass on to more and more involved and unsymmetrical forms, 

 as the columbine, monk's-hood, larkspur, aristolochia, and 

 thus finally to the most highly specialised or involved form 

 of all, as seen in the orchid; the multifarious, multiversant 

 orchid; the beautiful orchid, the ugly orchid; the fragrant 

 orchid, the graceful, homely, grotesque, uncanny, mimetic, 



