[18] "If anything could disentitle Montesquieu's _Esprit des Lois_ to the proud motto, _Prolem sine matre creatam_, it would be its close relationship to the Politics." (A. W. Benn's _Greek Philosophers_, Vol. II., p. 429.) [19] For an account of other early hypotheses of the same kind the reader may refer to Edward Clodd's _Pioneers of Evolution_. [20] _Life and Letters_, Vol. II., p. 212. [21] _Origin of Species_, ed. i., p. 484. [22] White uses _anecdote_ in the old sense, meaning by it a piece of unpublished information. [23] Réaumur, _Hist. des Insectes_, Vol. V., Mém. viii. [24] Darwin, _Origin of Species_, chap. vii. [25] Vol. III., Mém. iv. [26] _Hist. Nat._, Vol. IV. [27] The first edition of the _Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles_ (1792) was the work of François Huber alone; the second (1814) was prepared by Pierre with the co-operation of his father, and is here credited to the son. [28] _Hist. Animalium_, VIII., i. [29] Huxley's _Hume_, chap. v. Some few naturalists, who are entitled to respectful attention, such as Father Wasmann, author of _The Psychology of Ants_, do not even now receive the conclusions of Hume. [30] Lloyd Morgan, _Habit and Instinct_, Introduction. [31] _Phil. Trans._, 1904. PERIOD IV. 1790-1858 Characteristics of the Period. The first French republic and the first French empire were associated with a great outburst of scientific energy. French mathematics, astronomy, and physics were pre-eminent. England suffered from isolation during the continental war, but Davy, Young, the Herschels, Watt (now past his prime), Dalton, and William Smith supported the scientific reputation of their country. In Germany this was the age of Goethe and Schiller; Alexander von Humboldt was prominent among the scientific men of Prussia. The forty years' peace, during which reaction prevailed in many parts of Europe, was in England and America a time of steady growth and progress. Sprengel and the Fertilisation of Flowers. Conrad Sprengel, an unsuccessful schoolmaster who lived in a Berlin attic and got his bread by teaching languages or whatever else his pupils wished to learn, wrote a book which marks an epoch in the study of adaptations. This was his _Secret of Nature Discovered_, which appeared in 1793. Half a century passed before its merit was recognised by any influential naturalist; even then the recognition was private, and never reached the author, who had died long before. There was no striking of medals, no jubilee-celebration, nothing more than this, that Robert Brown recommended the book to Charles Darwin, who found in it, as he says, "an immense body of truth."