DARWIN AND HUMBOLDT 



[319] V, 



most remarkable modifications of leaf- 

 form. 



In the beginning of these remarks 

 the attempt has already been made to 

 do justice to the mark Mr. Darwin 

 has left on the modern study of geo- 

 graphical botany (and that implies a 

 •corresponding influence on phyto- 

 palseontology). To measure the in- 

 fluence which he has had on any 

 ■other branches of botany, it is suffi- 

 cient to quote again from the Origin 

 of Species : "The structure of each 

 part of each species, for whatever 

 purpose used, will be the sum of the 

 many inherited changes through 

 which the species has passed during 

 its successive adaptations to changed 

 habits and conditions of life." These 

 words may almost be said to be the 

 key-note of Sachs's well-known text- 

 book, which is the most authoritative 

 modern exposition of the facts and 

 principles of plant-structure and func- 

 tion; and there is probably not a 

 botanical class-room or work-room in 

 the civilized world where they are 

 not the animating principle of both 

 instruction and research. 



Notwithstanding the extent and 

 variety of his botanical work, Mr. 

 Darwin always disclaimed any right 

 to be regarded as a professed botanist. 

 He turned his attention to plants 

 doubtless because they were con- 

 venient objects for studying organic 

 phenomena in their least complicated 

 forms ; and this point of view, which, 

 if one may use the expression without 

 disrespect, had something of the 

 amateur about it, was in itself of the 

 greatest importance. For, from not 

 being, till he took up any point, fa- 

 miliar with the literature bearing on 

 it, his mind was absolutely free from 

 any prepossession. He was never 

 afraid of his facts or of framing any 

 hypothesis, however startling, which 

 seemed to explain them. However 

 much weight he attributed to inherit- 

 ance as a factor in orgauic phenomena, 

 tradition went for nothing in studying 

 them. In any one else such an atti- 

 tude would have produced much work 

 tKat was crude and rash. But Mr. 



Darwin — if one may venture on lan- 

 guage which will strike no one who 

 had conversed with him as over- 

 strained — seemed by gentle persuasion 

 to have penetrated that reserve of 

 nature which baffles smaller men. In 

 other words, his long experience had 

 given him a kind of instinctive in- 

 sight into the method of attack of 

 any biological problem, however un- 

 familiar to him, while he rigidly 

 controlled the fertility of his mind in 

 hypothetical explanations by the no 

 less fertility of ingeniously-devised 

 experiment. Whatever he touched, 

 he was sure to draw from it some- 

 thing that it had never before yielded, 

 and he was wholly free from that 

 familiarity which comes to the pro- 

 fessed student in every branch of 

 science, and blinds the mental eye 

 to the significance of things which 

 are overlooked because always in 

 view. 



The simplicity of Mr. Darwin's 

 character pervaded his whole method 

 of work. Alphonse de Candolle 

 visited him in 1880 and felt the im- 

 pression of this : " He was not one 

 of those who would construct a palace 

 to lodge a laboratory. I sought out 

 the greenhouse in which so many 

 admirable experiments had been made 

 on hybrids. It contained nothing but 

 a vine." There was no affectation in 

 this. Mr. Darwin provided himself 

 with every resource which the meth- 

 ods of the day or the mechanical 

 ingenuity of his sons could supply, 

 and when it had served its purpose it 

 was discarded. Nor had he any pre- 

 possession in favor of one kind of 

 scientific work more than another. 

 His scientific temperament was thor- 

 oughly catholic and sympathetic to 

 anything which was not a mere re- 

 grinding of old scientific dry bones. 

 He would show his visitors an Epi- 

 pactis which for years came up in the 

 middle of one of his gravel walks with 

 almost as much interest as some new 

 point which he had made out in a 

 piece of work actually in hand. And 

 though he had long abandoned any 

 active interest in systematic work, 



