Lab
Library
Journal
Shop
Sign in
to keep
Share image
1
136
My Studio Neighbors
·
W. Hamilton Gibson
95
But
Sprengel
had
divined
but
half
the
truth.
The
insect
was
necessary,
it
was
true,
but
the
Sprengel
idea
was
concerned
only
with
the
individual
flower,
and
the
great
botanist
was
soon
perplexed
and
confounded
by
an
opposing
array
of
facts
which
completely
destroyed
the
authority
of
his
work--facts
which
showed
conclusively
that
the
insect
could
not
thus
convey
the
pollen
as
described,
because
the
stigma
in
the
flower
was
either
not
yet
ready
to
receive
it--perhaps
tightly
closed
against
it--or
was
past
its
receptive
period,
even
decidedly
withered.
This
radical
assumption
of
fertilization
in
the
individual
flower,
which
lay
at
the
base
of
Sprengel's
theory,
thus
so
completely
exposed
as
false,
discredited
his
entire
work.
The
good
was
condemned
with
the
bad,
and
the
noble
volume
was
lost
in
comparative
oblivion--only
to
be
finally
resurrected
and
its
full
value
and
significance
revealed
by
the
keen
scientific
insight
of
Darwin
(1859).
From
the
new
stand-point
of
evolution
through
natural
selection
the
facts
in
Sprengel's
work
took
on
a
most
important
significance.
Darwin
now
reaffirmed
the
Sprengel
theory
so
far
as
the
necessity
of
the
insect
was
concerned,
but
showed
that
all
those
perplexing
floral
conditions
which
had
disproved
Sprengel's
assumption,
instead
of
having
for
their
object
the
conveying
of
pollen
to
the
stigma
of
the
same
flower,
implied
its
transfer
to
the
stigma
of
another,
cross-fertilization
being
the
evident
design,
or
evolved
and
perpetuated
advantage.
This
solution
was
made
logical
and
tenable
only
on
the
assumption
that
such
evolved
conditions,
insuring
cross-fertilization,
were
of
distinct
advantage
to
the
flower
in
the
competitive
struggle
for
existence,
and
that
all
cross-fertilized
flowers
were
thus
the
final
result
of
natural
selection.
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
