“Well, no matter,” said he, “what is it like?”

“It’s like a pea flower,” I replied.

“That’s right.  You’re right,” he said, “it belongs to the Pea Family.”

“But how can that be,” I objected, “when the pea is a weak, clinging, straggling herb, and the locust a big, thorny hardwood tree?”

“Yes, that is true,” he replied, “as to the difference in size, but it is also true that in all their essential characters they are alike, and therefore they must belong to one and the same family.  Just look at the peculiar form of the locust flower; you see that the upper petal, called the banner, is broad and erect, and so is the upper petal of the pea flower; the two lower petals, called the wings, are outspread and wing-shaped; so are those of the pea; and the two petals below the wings are united on their edges, curve upward, and form what is called the keel, and so you see are the corresponding petals of the pea flower.  And now look at the stamens and pistils.  You see that nine of the ten stamens have their filaments united into a sheath around the pistil, but the tenth stamen has its filament free.  These are very marked characters, are they not?  And, strange to say, you will find them the same in the tree and in the vine.  Now look at the ovules or seeds of the locust, and you will see that they are arranged in a pod or legume like those of the pea.  And look at the leaves.  You see the leaf of the locust is made up of several leaflets, and so also is the leaf of the pea.  Now taste the locust leaf.”

I did so and found that it tasted like the leaf of the pea.  Nature has used the same seasoning for both, though one is a straggling vine, the other a big tree.

“Now, surely you cannot imagine that all these similar characters are mere coincidences.  Do they not rather go to show that the Creator in making the pea vine and locust tree had the same idea in mind, and that plants are not classified arbitrarily?  Man has nothing to do with their classification.  Nature has attended to all that, giving essential unity with boundless variety, so that the botanist has only to examine plants to learn the harmony of their relations.”

This fine lesson charmed me and sent me to the woods and meadows in wild enthusiasm.  Like everybody else I was always fond of flowers, attracted by their external beauty and purity.  Now my eyes were opened to their inner beauty, all alike revealing glorious traces of the thoughts of God, and leading on and on into the infinite cosmos.  I wandered away at every opportunity, making long excursions round the lakes, gathering specimens and keeping them fresh in a bucket in my room to study at night after my regular class tasks were learned; for my eyes never closed on the plant glory I had seen.