RECEEATIVE SCIENCE. 



161 



advanced towards ripening. A very cursory- 

 examination will show you how diflferent the 

 little, double, ribbed, and often aromatic 

 seed is from those which have hitherto come 

 under our notice. The caraway seed is an 

 excellent specimen. Many drugs and aroma- 

 tics, and vegetables, such as carrot, parsnip, 

 celery, parsley, are yielded to us by the 

 umbel-bearers. 



Scarcely would it be possible to place in 

 your hand representatives of orders of plants 

 more important or more interesting than the 

 triad of which we have endeavoured to give 

 you some idea, and perhaps we could not 

 well select orders possassing characters more 

 likely to impress themselves upon the mind 

 of a beginner in the study of botany. 



We mentioned the white meadow saxi- 

 frage and the willow herb as included in our 

 present handful of weeds. To such as know 

 them by their familiar names they will offer 

 examples of other, but perhaps less strongly 

 marked, plant families, which still have the 

 distinct petal character and the calycine at- 

 tachment of stamen and petal. The white 

 meadow saxifrage is an elegant plant, often 

 found very abundantly during May, bearing 

 its collection of white blossoms on a stem 

 from four to six inches high, and spring- 

 ing from a root which seems made up of 

 a number of bead-like granules, the size 

 of small peas. It represents well a plant 

 ■ a family, the Saxifrages, which 

 contains many beautiful mem- 

 bers, but from which man 

 draws but little that is useful. 

 The willow herbs are still more 

 common than the saxifrages, 

 and towards the end of June 

 and in July are to be found by 

 nearly every hedge-side — at 

 least the smaller species with 

 their small pink flowers. A 

 little later, the great hairy willow herb of our 

 ditches and ponds offers its handsome, large, 

 rose-coloured blossoms. If ycu know the 



plants, or can find them, you will recognize 

 the same structural arrangement of petal and 

 stamen that we have dwelt so much upon, 

 and when you come to examine the pistil 

 (Fig. 38) you get another variety of the 

 organ ; for here the stigma is elegantly cleft 

 into four divisions. The friliting and seed- 

 ing of these willow herbs are peculiar ; but 

 of that hereafter. 



The parts of plants to which, in these 

 our early lessons, we have more especially 

 directed your attention, are all included in 

 the term Eeproductive Organs — that is to say, 

 they are such as conduce to the formation of 

 the seed upon which the continuation and 

 reproduction of the plant species depend. The 

 calyx, the corolla, the stamens, the pistil, 

 make up what we commonly understand as a 

 flower, and without a flower there can be no 

 seed ; but a botanist's flower and a florist's 

 flower are two very different things. The 

 florist requires gay colouring and fine petals, 

 and cares but little for stamen or pistil ; the 

 botanist looks to the latter only as the esuoi- 

 tials of his flower — in other words, these 

 organs are all that are required for the pro- 

 duction of seed, and are therefore the essential 

 rejiroductive organs ; indeed, in some plants 

 we find no flowering beyond the stamen and 

 pistil development. 



" God might have made the earth bring forth 

 Enough for great and small; 

 The oak-tree and the cedar-tree, 

 Without a flower at all. 



" He might have made enough, enough, 

 For every want of ours ; 

 For medicine, luxury, and toil, 

 And yet have made no flowers." 



And truth it is that we might have had 

 all essential means of seed production with- 

 out that beauty which He who made all 

 things has lavished upon the lilies of the 

 field. Calyx and corolla are apparently non- 

 essential to seeding, and yet we cannot but 

 imagine that they subserve some office of 

 greater or less importance beyond delighting 

 the eye. 



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