Riddles m Flowers 



INDEED, are they not all rid- 

 dles? Where is the flower which 

 even to the most devoted of us has 

 yet confided all its mysteries ? 

 In comparison with the insight 

 of the earlier botanists, we have 

 surely come much closer to the 

 flowers, and they have im- 

 parted many of their se- 

 crets to us. Through the inspired 

 vision of Sprengel, Darwin, and 

 their followers we have learned 

 something of their meaning, in 

 addition to the knowledge of their 

 structure, which comprised the end 

 and aim of the study of those early 

 scholars, Linnaeus, Lindley, J ussieu, and De Can- 

 dolle. To these and other eminent worthies 

 in botany we owe much of our knowledge of 

 how the flowers are made, and of the classifi- 

 cation based upon this stri^cture, but if these 



