18 THE VOICES OF FLOWERS. 



in form which becomes characteristic of that flower whose petals 

 it has left. With all this variety, none has yet discovered where 

 in exists that mysterious power which that little tiny particle 

 of dust possesses of communicating unchanged through so many 

 changes the features of its parent plant. First, this little dust 

 must attach itself to the pistil of a neighboring flower. Caught 

 on the stigma, it is carried down the pistil-stem to the germ. 

 There it has already undergone a change, and has become 

 absorbed in the material of the future seed, at the base of the 

 flower. Soon the seed will be perfectly formed and dried, and 

 the dead petals, falling off from the calyx, will leave that seed 

 at liberty. Then, caught up by the gale or carried away by 

 the birds, it will presently fall upon some distant soil and 

 undergo decay, and from that decaying seed will shoot forth 

 an embryo plant, a little stem, gently unfolding to the sun 

 and rain its tiny leaves and branches. In a few months it too 

 will bear its flowers and its seed, and upon that seed will be 

 found perhaps a colored mark strangely different from that of 

 the seed which fell into the ground some time since. It is a 

 new variety, colored with a shade and formed into a shape 

 unknown to the parent plant which bore the former seed. 

 Would you know whence came that little streak of color ? It 

 was that of a seed in a distant field, the minute dust of 

 whose pollen, like a little planet full of mysterious power, 

 floated from that open blossom until, meeting in its aerial 

 journey the open petals of another plant, it quietly settled 

 upon its little delicate fibres, and, in course of the changes 

 described above, caused the new features we have mentioned. 



