i88i.] BOTANY FOR GARDENERS. 225 



I did not telegraph instead. Two others — oae aged nineteen, the other twenty- 

 four — w'anted "a place in which they could get married ;" and three more 

 offered premiums varying from £5 to £10 for the place. Seven were garden- 

 ers' sons, and referred to their fathers amongst other employers. One was a 

 " humble boy, " and two very rightly desired to have "a Christian master. " 

 But, as I before said, the great anxiety of their minds — the one idea struggling 

 to the surface — of more consequence to them than the organ, the cow, the 

 quire, Christian master, foreman's place, or lovely tenor voice, is the morbid 

 craving to be " under glass." Writer. 



BOTA]SrY FOR GARDENERS. 



XO. Yll. — THE OVULE, vtC. 



Before alluding to the Ovule, it will perhaps be better for me to give a 

 few brief words on the stamens and pistils, essential to all plants for 

 the production of fruit. Stamens are the male organs of the plant, 

 and consist of a bundle of spiral vessels surrounded by cellular tissue, 

 termed the filament, at the top of which will be found the anthers, 

 that finally open and discharge their contents — pollen — which is 

 usually a powdery matter, and by whose action on the stigma the 

 fertilisation of the ovules is accomplished. A familiar example of 

 pollen will be found in the common garden Crocus. Let the reader 

 take a stamen from the flower of this plant and gently rub it between 

 the finger and thumb, and he will find both covered with pollen-grains ; 

 thus it will be easy to account for the short crops of fruit sometimes 

 taking place. Last year, for example, the continuous rains probably 

 washed away the greater part of these small grains, and thus prevented 

 their being fertilised with the pistil, without which the natural con- 

 sequence is, short crop. Pistils — the female organs — are always in 

 perfection simultaneously with the male parts (stamens): they (the pis- 

 tils) are composed usually of the stigma — the parts at or near the point 

 — to which the pollen must be applied to fertilise the seed ; the style, 

 usually very long, but sometimes absent, supporting the stigma ; and 

 the ovarium, or embryo seed-vessel. The stigma is invariably viscid or 

 clammy, so that immediately the pollen bursts from the anthers it 

 adheres to it. In the saffron of shops will be recognised the stamens 

 of a Crocus (Crocus sativus) ; and no wonder it is so expensive, con- 

 sidering that only three stamens are found in one flower, taking, as a 

 matter of course, a goodly number to make a pound in weight. In 

 some cases the male and female organs are in separate flowers, the 

 fertilisation of which is often performed by insects, &c. ; and it is on 

 the number of both stamens and pistils that the great Linnaeus based 

 his system of botany — now, however, in disuse, the natural system being 

 much preferred by modern botanists. I shall probably say a few words 

 about both systems in a future number. The Ovule is the rudiment 

 of a future seed, and is inserted in the lower portion of the carpel, 



