198 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



less attractive genera and families, like the Crucifers and the Composites, came 

 near to damping my ardour. Still I persevered, even resisting as a rule the 

 terrible temptation to guess at the plant's identity a priori, instead of working it 

 out honestly by the key. I think my progress surprised even my foster parent 

 the Science master, for I took to Botany as a duck takes to the water ; he 

 hadn't allowed enough for some of the main factors in the problem ; 1 had 

 spent years in the English lanes and knew the household names of most of the 

 familiar flowers ; Greek and Latin harl become almost a mother tongue to me 

 and a second nature, so that the botanical terms were full of meaning ; and, 

 more than all, I i)urned with desire to gain "the freedom of the realm" ; ahead 

 of me I could see summers full of glorious discovery in Ontario ; and when I 

 had discovered America (botanically ). I was determined to go over and discover 

 Great Britain ; and never did Highlander with the gift of second sight see the 

 vision of his own future more truly than 1 did that first Spring in Smith's Falls. 

 It w?> a case of Archimedes and his lever over again ; given Spotton ( f)r 

 Gray), I could move the universe — or at least stick labels all over it ; if an 

 Afrite had dropped me into the heart of some equatorial forest, I'd have wel- 

 comed the chance and, bar cannibals, crocodiles and the tsetse fly, been as happy 

 as a clam. 



That plants like animals had sex was a piece of common knowledge. l)ut 

 the analysis of a flower and the names and relations of its dift'erent parts were 

 quite new to me. My first lessons were in this, and by taking a few leading 

 types and separating their parts, identifying each of these and studying their 

 mutual relations, I soon got the hang of the system. 



The very heart and centre of every perfect flower was an elongate hol- 

 low body (the pistil) of com])lex nature, comprising below a vessel (the ovary) 

 in which the unripe seeds (ovules) developed ; at the upper end of the ovary 

 was a vertical extension in the form of a slender tube or hollow stalk (style) 

 whose widened apex (stigma) served as a receptacle for the pollen-grains, 

 which then passed down the style-tube into the ovary ; round this procreant 

 cradle of the flower were grouped, like a bodv guard rnund their queen, a set of 

 tiny stalks (stamens), each surmounted by a pair of little boat-shaped vessels 

 (anthers) of pollen to quicken the ovules ; in turn about these two essential 

 parts. — the queen and her consorts (pistil and stamens), were grouped usually 

 two sets of leaf-like protective lobes known as the floral envelope ; the inner 

 ring (corolla) of brightly colored lobes (the petals), and the outer ring (calyx) 

 of green lobes (the sepals) ; if only one of these two rings occurred, whether 

 green or brightly colored, it was called the calyx of sepals. 



According to the form of the pistil and the number and arrangement of 

 stamens, petals and sepals, all flowering j^lants were arranged into two great 

 divisions: I. those whose seeds in germinating sprouted into a single leaf (Mono- 

 cotyledons), and II. those whose seeds sprouted into a i)air of leaves (Dicotyle- 

 dons.) The first class had nearly always straight or parallel veins in the 

 leaves, and their flower parts in 3's ; it included (a) Arrowheads, (b) Grasses, 

 (c) Sedges, (d) Arums, (e) Rushes, (f) Lilies, (g) Irids. (h) Orchids. The 

 second class had net-veined leaves and the i)arts of the flowers in 5's and 4's, 

 occasionally 2's. Of this class a small sub-division bore the seeds naked (i.e. 



