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Show 286 DARWINIAN A. it until you have found it all out for !~urse1f, when ou will have the satisfaction of percmvmg that Mr. ~rown not only knew all about it, but had put it upo n record. Very d. ifferent . from this i. s the .w ay in which Mr. Darwin takes h1s readers mto his ·con-fidence freely displays . to them the sources of his inform~tion and the working of his mind, and even. shares with 'them all his doubts and misgivings, while in a clear exposition he sets forth the reasons which have guided him to his conclusions. These you may hesitate or decline to adopt, but you feel sure that they have been presented with perfect fairness.; and if you think of arguments against them you may be confident that they have all been duly considered before. The sagacity which charact~rizes t~ese t":o~ na~uralists is seen in their success m :findmg dec1s1ve rnstances and their sure insight into the meaning of things.' As an instance of the latter on Mr. Darwin's part, and a justification of our v~n ture to co1~pa~·~ him with the facile prilnceps bo~anworu~, we. w11l, m conclusion allude to the single mstance m whiCh they took the s~me subject in hand. In his papers on the organs and modes of fecundation in Orcl~idem and ..Asclepiadece, Mr. Brown refers more than once to C. K. Sprengel's almost forgotten work, shows how .the structure of the flowers 'in these orders larg~ly reqmr~s the agency of insects for their fecun~atwn, and IS . aware that "in ..Asclepiadece .... the mse~t so readily passes from one corolla to another that 1t not unfr~ quently visits every :f:low~r of the umbel." He m~st also have contemplat~d the transport of pollen fro~ plant to plant by ·wind and insects; and we know from another sour.ce that he looked upon Spren- OH.A.RLES DARWIN: A SKETCH. 287 gel's ideas as far from fantastic. Yet, instead of taking the single forward step which now seems so obvious, he even hazarded the conjecture that the insect-forms of some orchideous flowers are intended to deter rather than to attract insects. And so the e1..'Planation of all these and other extraordinary structtues, as well as of the arrangement of blossoms in gene:Pa1, and even the very meaning and need of sexual propagation, were left to be supplied by Mr. Darwin. The aphorism " Nature abhors a vacuum" is a characteristic specimen of the science of the middle ages. The aphorism "Nature abhors close fertilization," and the demonstration of the principle, belong to our age, and to Mr. Darwin. To have originated this, and also the principle of natural selection-the truthfulness and importance of which are evident the moment it is apprehended-and to have applied these principles to the system of Nature in such a manner · as to make, within a dozen years, a deeper impression upon natural history than has been made since Linnreus, is ample title for one man)s fame. There is no need of our giving _any account or of estimating the importance of such works as the '' Origin of Species by means . of Natural Selection," the " Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," the "Descent of Man, and Selection in relation to Sex," and the "Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals "-a series to which we may hope other volumes may in due time be added. We would rather, if space permitted, attempt an analysis of the less known, but not less masterly, subsidiary essays, upon the various arrangements for insuring cross-fer- |