I have found the study of Orchids eminently useful in showing me how nearly all parts of the flower are co-adapted for fertilization by insects, and therefore the results of natural selection--even the most trifling details of structure."
One of the greatest services rendered by my father to the study of Natural History is the revival of Teleology. The evolutionist studies the purpose or meaning of organs with the zeal of the older Teleology, but with far wider and more coherent purpose. He has the invigorating knowledge that he is gaining not isolated conceptions of the economy of the present, but a coherent view of both past and present. And even where he fails to discover the use of any part, he may, by a knowledge of its structure, unravel the history of the past vicissitudes in the life of the species. In this way a vigour and unity is given to the study of the forms of organised beings, which before it lacked. This point has already been discussed in Mr. Huxley's chapter on the 'Reception of the "Origin of Species",' and need not be here considered. It does, however, concern us to recognize that this "great service to natural science," as Dr. Gray describes it, was effected almost as much by his special botanical work as by the 'Origin of Species.'
For a statement of the scope and influence of my father's botanical work, I may refer to Mr. Thiselton Dyer's article in 'Charles Darwin,' one of the "Nature Series". Mr. Dyer's wide knowledge, his friendship with my father, and especially his power of sympathising with the work of others, combine to give this essay a permanent value. The following passage (page 43) gives a true picture:--
"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 convenient 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, familiar 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...In any one else such an attitude would have produced much work that was crude and rash. But Mr. Darwin--if one may venture on language 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 insight into the method of attack of any biological problem, however unfamiliar to him, while he rigidly controlled the fertility of his mind in hypothetical explanations by the no less fertility of ingeniously devised experiment."
To form any just idea of the greatness of the revolution worked by my father's researches in the study of the fertilisation of flowers, it is necessary to know from what a condition this branch of knowledge has emerged. It should be remembered that it was only during the early years of the present century that the idea of sex, as applied to plants, became at all firmly established. Sachs, in his 'History of Botany' (1875), has given some striking illustrations of the remarkable slowness with which its acceptance gained ground. He remarks that when we consider the experimental proofs given by Camerarius (1694), and by Kolreuter (1761-66), it appears incredible that doubts should afterwards have been raised as to the sexuality of plants. Yet he shows that such doubts did actually repeatedly crop up. These adverse criticisms rested for the most part on careless experiments, but in many cases on a priori arguments. Even as late as 1820, a book of this kind, which would now rank with circle squaring, or flat-earth philosophy, was seriously noticed in a botanical journal.