Fic. 185 
[98 
>The top of the lily’s pistil is quite large and some- 
what flat. It is almost as sticky as if it had. received 
a dab of glue. < 
This flat top dwindles below into a stalk, 
grows larger again at its lower end. 
Now take a sharp knife and cut open lengthwise 
this pistil. 
The lower, thicker part, seen through a magnifying 
glass, looks like Fig. 185. You see a great many baby 
seeds fastened to a central wall. Each one of these 
seeds holds a speck of the wonderful material without 
which there is no life. But this speck of life has not 
the power to make the seed grow into a plant. To do 
this, the seed must have some outside help; and this 
help can come only from a grain of flower dust. 
Perhaps you wonder how a dust grain brushed on 
the pistil’s flat top can ever reach the baby seeds 
hidden away in the seedbox. 
-I could not tell you to-day how this is done were 
it not for those wise and patient men and women who 
have spent days and weeks and months, and even 
years, in watching and studying the ways of plants. 
But first let me ask you a question. 
What happens when a healthy seed falls on moist 
ground ? 
Why, it seems to take in the moisture, and to thrive 
upon it- It swells up, and at last it bursts open, and 
it sends a root down into the earth. ? 
Now, something not altogether unlike this aa 
when -a lily dust grain falls upon the moist tip. of ‘a 
lily pistil. The dust grain sucks in the moisture. It: ~~ 
