conviction, and must be heard.

What a contrast this winged botany of to-day to that of a hundred years
ago! The flower now no longer the mere non-committal, structural,
botanical specimen. No longer the example of mere arbitrary, independent
creation, reverently and solely referred to the orthodox "delight of
man." The blossom whose unhappy fate was bemoaned by the poet because,
forsooth, it must needs "blush unseen," or "waste its sweetness on the
desert air," is found alone in that musty _hortus siccus_ of a blind and
deluded past. From the status of mere arbitrary creation, however
"beautiful," "curious," "eccentric," hitherto accepted alone on
faith--"it is thus because it is created thus: what need to ask the
reason why?"--it has become a part of our inspiring heritage, a
reasonable, logical, comprehensible _result_, a manifestation of a
beautiful divine scheme, and is thus an ever-present witness and prophet
of divine care and supervision.

The flower of to-day! What an inspiration to our reverential study! What
a new revelation is borne upon its perfume! Its forms and hues, what
invitations to our devotion! This spot upon the petal; this peculiar
quality of perfume or odor; this fringe within the throat; this curving
stamen; this slender tube! What a catechism to one who knows that each
and all represent an affinity to some insect, towards whose vital
companionship the flower has been adapting itself through the ages,
looking to its own more certain perpetuation!

The great Linnaeus would doubtless have claimed to "know" the "orchid,"
which perhaps he named. Indeed, did he not "know" it to the core of its
physical, if not of its physiological, being? But could he have solved
the riddle of the orchid's persistent refusal to set a pod in the
conservatory? Could he have divined why the orchid blossom continues in
bloom for weeks and weeks in this artificial glazed tropic--perhaps
weeks longer than its more fortunate fellows left behind in their native
haunts--and then only to wither and perish without requital? Know the
orchid?--without the faintest idea of the veritable divorce which its
kidnapping had involved!

Thanks to the new dispensation, we may indeed claim a deeper sympathy
with the flower than is implied in a mere recognition of its pretty
face. We know that this orchid is but the half of itself, as it were;
that its color, its form, however eccentric and incomprehensible, its
twisted inverted positi