468 Home Nature-Study Course. 



mines for its food between the upper and lower surfaces of the leaf, and 

 lives its whole life in this mine until it is ready to change to a moth. 



THE PANSY. 



LESSON xxxni. 



Preliminary IVork. — The children naturally love pansies because of the resem- 

 blance which these flowers bear to quaint little faces. They will become still more 

 interested in these fiowers after they see the little man with the green head, which 

 grows in the flower as it fades. The pupils should be led to greater interest in the 

 flowers by studying their great variations in color, and getting to know the most 

 popular varieties by name, thus getting them ready for planting the seeds in their 

 gardens during the coming spring. It will be well for the teacher to tell the 

 children how this favorite flower was called heartsease by our ancestors, and that 

 the meaning of the word pansy is thought. There are mam^ beautiful poems which 

 will lead the children to a greater interest in this lovely flower. After the pansies 

 mean something to the pupils, parts of the following lessons may be given accord- 

 ing to the grades. 



Purpose. — To acquaint the pupil with the details of the flower and 

 to note where the seed is developed. 



Observations. — The flower has five petals, the lower one being elon- 

 gated into a little closed tube, which extends back to the stem between 

 the sepals, making a nectar storehouse. Note the difference in coloring 

 between the two upper petals and the three lower ones; notice that each 

 of the side petals has developed a little velvety fringe, which arches over 

 the hole at the center of the flower. This fringe is probably for brushing 

 the pollen grains from the head of the visiting insects so that they will 

 surely reach the green, round stigma, which may be seen below at the 

 heart of the flower. 



Note that the sepals look as if they were fastened on at about one- 

 third their length. 



Take a flower a little past its prime, remove 

 the petals and discover the little man that is 

 seated at the center of the five sepals. He has a 

 green head with his mouth near the top. This 

 head can be seen in any pansy, and the object of 

 having the mouth at the top is so that it may 



receive the pollen, for it is the stigma. The little 



The little man in the i.-.- 1 -.1 n j 1 



man wears a whitish cape with a scalloped red- 

 pansv. . ... 



dish-brown collar, and he sits with his bandy 



legs pushed back in the nectar tube, as if he were taking a foot bath. 



The cape is made of the five flat overlapping stamens, and the brown 



