STAMENS AND PISTILS. 193 



most easy to repeat and to understand. He removed 

 the anthers from a flower of Glaucium phosniceum : 

 stripping off the rest of that day's blossoms. Another 

 morning he repeated the same practice, only sprink- 

 ling the stigma of that blossom, which he had last de- 

 prived of its own stamens, with the pollen from anoth- 

 er. The flower first mutilated produced no fruit, but 

 the second afforded very perfect seed. His design was 

 to prevent any one in future from believing that the re- 

 moval of the anthers from a flower was in itself capa- 

 ble of rendering the germen abortive. 



The usual proportion and situation of stamens with 

 respect to pistils is well worthy of notice. The former 

 are generally shortest in drooping flowers, longest in 

 erect ones. The barren blossoms usually stand above 

 the fertile ones, (and no plant is better calculated to ex- 

 hibit this arrangement than the Indian Corn) that the 

 pollen may fall on the stigmas. This is the more remark- 

 able, as the usual order of Nature seems in such plants, 

 as well indeed as in compound, and even in umbellif- 

 erous flowers, to be reversed, for the pistils are in- 

 variably central, or internal, in every simple flower, 

 and would therefore, if drawn out into a monoecious 

 spike, be above the stamens. 



Many curious contrivances of Nature serve to bring 

 the anthers and stigmas together. In Gloriosa, the 

 style is bent, at a right angle from the very base, for 

 this evident purpose. In Saxifraga, and Parnassia, 

 the stamens lean one or two at a time over the stigma, 

 retiring after they have shed their pollen, and giving 

 place to others ; which wonderful economy is very 

 striking in the garden Rue, whose stout and firm fila- 

 ments cannot be disturbed from the posture in which 



they may happen to be, and evince aspontaneous move 

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