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136
My Studio Neighbors
·
W. Hamilton Gibson
61
1.
"Flowers
are
fertilized
by
insects."
2.
Insects
in
approaching
the
nectar
brush
the
pollen
from
the
anthers
with
various
hairy
parts
of
their
bodies,
and
in
their
motions
convey
it
to
the
stigma.
But
Sprengel's
seeming
victory
was
doomed
to
be
turned
to
defeat.
The
true
"secret"
was
yet
unrevealed
in
his
pages.
He
had
given
a
poser
to
Linnaeus
(C),
yet
his
own
work
abounded
with
similar
strange
inconsistencies,
which,
while
being
scarcely
admitted
by
himself,
or
ingeniously
explained,
were
nevertheless
fatal
to
the
full
recognition
of
his
wonderful
researches.
For
seventy
years
his
book
lay
almost
unnoticed.
"Let
us
not
underrate
the
value
of
a
fact;
it
will
one
day
flower
in
a
truth."
The
defects
in
Sprengel's
work
were,
after
all,
not
actual
defects.
The
error
lay
simply
in
his
interpretation
of
his
carefully
noted
facts.
As
Hermann
Mueller
has
said,
"Sprengel's
investigations
afford
an
example
of
how
even
work
that
is
rich
in
acute
observation
and
happy
interpretation
may
remain
inoperative
if
the
idea
at
its
foundation
is
defective."
What,
then,
was
the
flaw
in
Sprengel's
work?
Simply
that
he
had
seen
but
half
the
"secret"
which
he
claimed
to
have
"discovered."
Starting
to
prove
that
insects
fertilize
the
flowers,
his
carefully
observed
facts
only
served
to
demonstrate
in
many
cases
the
reverse--that
insects
could
not
fertilize
flowers
in
the
manner
he
had
declared.
He
was
met
at
every
hand,
for
instance,
by
floral
problems
such
as
are
shown
at
E
and
F,
where
the
pollen
and
the
stigma
in
the
same
flower
matured
at
different
periods;
and
even
though
he
recognized
and
admitted
that
the
pollen
must
in
many
cases
be
transferred
from
one
flower
to
another,
he
failed
to
divine
that
such
was
actually
the
common
vital
plan
involved.
It
may
readily
be
imagined
that
his
great
work
precipitated
an
intense
and
prolonged
controversy,
and
incited
emulous
investigation
by
the
botanists
of
his
time.
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