The most recent investigators into botanical science are not classifying plants, but they are examining into the meaning of their structure. The mere task of description and enumeration has been done, and so they have set themselves to find out why certain structures exist, and why certain habits (if we may use the word) have been formed. Why do the climbing plants climb at all? and why do some twine, and others cling? Why do the fly-catching plants cause the death of numbers of unlucky insects? Why are the stamens and pistils in plants of such various lengths and sizes? Why have some flowers a hairy fringe, and others drops of nectar in their calyces? What is the meaning of the scent of flowers, and what is the object of the night-opening flowers? The key to many of these questions is in the relationship of flowers to insects; and Charles Darwin, Sir John Lubbock, and others, have done very much to explore and then to popularize the subject. Much that is most important has thus been made known to us, but these eminent naturalists would be the first to own that there is much more still to do. The secrets of nature open out but slowly, and after long and patient wooing. It would sometimes appear too as if there might be danger, not indeed of adapting facts to theory, but of taking it too readily for granted that all facts must eventually fit into some favourite theory. This tendency may not be so apparent in the leaders as in their less cautious disciples in these scientific researches. From some of their expressions they would almost seem to imply that insects were made for the sake of fertilizing flowers. They attribute the bright colour and beauty of flowers not to the same good purpose that gives beauty elsewhere, but as if it were merely that insects may be attracted, and do their duty among the ripening pollen. They are contemptuous at the idea of a flower being intended for the selfish pleasure of man and not for its own purposes, and they point to plants of beauty that “blush unseen” where man cannot admire them, forgetting, however, that man _has_ seen them, or he would not know of their existence. They will learn nothing of the affluence of nature, and nothing is quite accepted unless its use can be established, though on this principle it is hard to explain why, as Bishop Hall pointed out long ago, “there is many a rich stone laid up in the bowels of the earth, many a faire pearle laid up in the bosome of the sea, that never was seen, nor never shall be.”