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136
My Studio Neighbors
·
W. Hamilton Gibson
62
Though
a
few
of
the
more
advanced
of
his
followers,
among
them
Andrew
Knight
(1799),
Koehlreuter
(1811),
Herbert
(1837),
Gaertner
(1844),
clearly
recognized
the
principle
and
foreshadowed
the
later
theory
of
cross-fertilization,
it
was
not
until
the
inspired
insight
of
Darwin,
as
voiced
in
his
"Origin
of
Species,"
contemplated
these
strange
facts
and
inconsistencies
of
Sprengel
that
their
full
significance
and
actual
value
were
discovered
and
demonstrated,
and
his
remarkable
book,
forgotten
for
seventy
years,
at
last
appreciated
for
its
true
worth.
Alas
for
the
irony
of
fate!
Under
Darwin's
interpretation
the
very
"defects"
which
had
rendered
Sprengel's
work
a
failure
now
became
the
absolute
witness
of
a
deeper
truth
which
Sprengel
had
failed
to
discern.
One
more
short
step
and
he
had
reached
the
goal.
But
this
last
step
was
reserved
for
the
later
seer.
He
took
the
fatal
double
problem
of
Sprengel--as
shown
at
E
and
F,
to
express
the
consummation
pictorially--and
by
the
simple
drawing
of
a
line,
as
it
were,
as
indicated
between
G
and
H,
instantly
reconciled
all
the
previous
perplexities
and
inconsistencies,
thus
demonstrating
the
fundamental
plan
involved
in
floral
construction
to
be
not
merely
"insect
fertilization,"
the
fatal
postulate
assumed
by
Sprengel,
but
cross-fertilization--a
fact
which,
singularly
enough,
the
latter's
own
pages
proved
without
his
suspicion.
Thus
we
see
the
four
successive
steps
in
progressive
knowledge,
from
Grew
in
1682,
Linnaeus,
1735,
Sprengel,
1787,
to
Darwin,
1857-1858,
and
realize
with
astonishment
that
it
has
taken
over
one
hundred
and
seventy-five
years
for
humanity
to
learn
this
apparently
simple
lesson,
which
for
untold
centuries
has
been
noised
abroad
on
the
murmuring
wings
of
every
bee
in
the
meadow,
and
demonstrated
in
almost
every
flower.
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