94 ' JBotans 



were well enough off, and that discontent could not 

 enter so rare a palace of delight. However, close 

 examination will, perhaps, show us a series of stamens 

 leaving their high estate, their golden usefulness, to 

 become petals ; not only so, but when degeneration 

 begins there is no knowing where it will end, and 

 back of the white petals these stamens on the down 

 grade go, to turn into the green pink-tinted sepals. 

 Here is a calyx sepal, one edge curled over, thicker 

 than the others, yellowish still ; wliat is this ? Surely 

 here is a stamen degenerate, the short filament and 

 the golden anther expanded and changed broadly 

 and coarsely into a sepal nearly like the other sepals. 

 Now search the white corolla segments, and here is 

 one along one margin of which we plainly trace half 

 of a filament and half of an anther, the other halves 

 having bleached and widened into a petal ; here is a 

 narrower petal showing the stamen formation more 

 fully ; here is a stamen with its filament widened 

 and whitened, and its anther paled and shrunken, 

 well on its way to petaldom ; and here are others less 

 and less modified, until we have the whole series 

 back to normal. Well, and what of that? Perhaps 

 in the very long ago a water lily was but a receptacle 

 full of stamens and pistil, and a scale or two, to pre- 

 vent the intrusion of water ; then these stamens took 

 to changing and changing, becoming at last the 



