58 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



■who is seeking for novelties with which to adorn his grounds and make home 

 pleasant. Trees and shrubs are the cheapest ornament. 



Many of our native trees and shrubs are preferable to those from distant 

 countries. The shrewdest men have long since discovered that no mom-y pays 

 a better interest than that used by skillful hands in making a home pleasant. 

 If you wish to sell a place, it is sure to pay more than 20 per cent on the 

 investment; if you want it for a permanent home, who dare say it pays less? 

 More attention to these subjects is one of the greatest wants of our thrifty 

 Western people. 



THE FEETILIZATIOlSr OF PLANTS. 



On Thursday evening, January 24, in Eepresentative Hall, Professor Beal 

 was called upon to make some explanations about the fertilization of flowers. 

 He responded as follows : 



Suppose my hat, with these papers stuck upon it, represents a strawberry 

 blossom. There are the showy petals, and there the slender stamens, each 

 hearing a pouch at the tip full of dust called pollen, and in the center or top 

 of the flower other small bodies called pistils, the top of which are naked and 

 sticky, without epidermis. That the vines bear fruit, it is necessary for the 

 dust to fall upon the naked portion of each pistil. This ie^ the structure of 

 the Wilson strawberry; but some of our cultivated varieties bear no pollen in 

 the pouches. These will produce no fruit without receiving pollen from other 

 plants. Insects transfer this pollen from flower to flower. In Indian corn the 

 pollen is all on the tassels at the top of the stalk. The threads of silk on the 

 young ear run down, each to what is to become a kernel. A speck of pollen 

 falls on the end of each silk, and grows down several inches to fertilize the 

 embryo kernel; else there will be no corn .formed. 



Cucumber vines and vines of melons, squashes, pumpkins, all like Indian 

 corn, have two kinds of flowers on different parts of the same plant. A small 

 part of these flowers (may be one in five) has a large bunch at-«the base of the- 

 flower which becomes the fruit if it be fertilized. The vines are low, the pollen 

 slightly sticky, and situated down deep in the yellow part of the flower. This 

 dust cannot get to the pistil unless insects carry it there. The little striped 

 hugs, considered such pests on the young squashes, when first out ofthe ground, 

 are found covered all over with the pollen as they go about for the honey in 

 the flowers of older plants. If there were no insects, there would be no melons, 

 squashes, nor cucumbers. They would perish. Each helps the other. Insects 

 eat the young plants and honey of flowers, but help in reproducing plants to 

 pay for their food. Bees carry pollen as well as the striped beetles. 



It has been suggested that the Yellows in the peach are transmitted by 

 insects visiting the flowers. This seems to me quite probable, though I have 

 not proved it. There is an idea, which some physicians have some testimony 

 to sustain, that diseases, like the small-pox, are transmitted by the common 

 house-fly. Then why not transmit the Yellows to the naked tip of the pistil? 

 Mr. Charles Darwin, an eminent Eoglish experimenter as well as theorizer,. 

 proved some years ago that there would be no seed in our common flax plants 

 without the aid of "insects to carry the pollen. This seemed incredible, because 

 each flower has pollen and pistil close to each other, so that they always meet. 

 Insects do the work. Our common gardcm beans would only be half a crop 

 without the aid of insects, though the flowers all have both stamens and pistils 

 touching each other. Our common blue fl:ig, and all cultivated plants called 

 Iris, have the flowers so constructed — whicn I cannot well explain without 



