VARIOUS MARRIAGE CUSTOMS. 97 



ly reduced to four, and the sepals to two. Again, 

 a good instance of flowers with separate petals 

 which have become one-sided or irregular, instead 

 of circularly symmetrical, is afforded us by the 

 peaflowers, which include the pea, the bean, the 

 sweet-pea, the laburnum, the broom, the gorse, 

 the vetch, and the lupine. This familiar family^ 

 known to botanists as the papilionaceous or but- 

 terfly-like order (I trouble you with as few long 

 names as I can, so you must forgive one or two 

 occasionally), is one of the largest in the world, 

 and includes a vast number of the most useful 

 and also of the most ornamental species. The 

 structure of the flower, which is very similar in 

 them all, can be easily studied in the broom or 

 the sweet-pea, plants procurable by everybody. 

 There are still five petals, though two of them are 

 united to form a lower portion of the flower, 

 known as the keel ; then two others at the side 

 are called the wings; while a broad and often 

 handsomely coloured advertisement-petal at the 

 top of all is called the standard. The sepals are 

 often combined into a single calyx-piece, though 

 as a rule the calyx still retains five lobes or teeth, 

 a reminiscence of the time when it consisted of 

 five distinct and separate sepals. The stamens 

 are welded together into a sort of long tube; and 

 the pistil is reduced to a single carpel or pod, 

 containing a few big seeds, very familiar to most 

 of us in the case of the pea, the bean, and the 

 scarlet-runner. This shape of flower has proved 

 so successful in the struggle for life that papil- 

 ionaceous plants are now common everywhere, 

 while hundreds of different kinds are known in 

 various countries. 



Yet closely as the peaflowers resemble one 

 7 



