236 Singing Valleys 



egg "mother cell" at the base of each thread of corn silk, 

 there are four megaspores. 



Thus far, Nature has made no distinction between the male 

 and female elements. Now she does. For while the four pollen 

 grains mature and achieve fertility, three of the four female 

 spores die off. Of the four virgins she has created, Nature 

 selects one to be mated and to serve the race. 



This chosen bride develops into the embryo sac. It con- 

 tains eight nuclei, all genetically identical. One of these is 

 destined to be the corn germ in the kernel, rich in precious 

 oil. Two others will play their part in forming the starchy 

 and glutenous endosperm of the completed kernel. 



All through the months of June and July, while the corn 

 has been growing taller and taller, while the roots have been 

 driving deeper and deeper into the earth seeking nourishment 

 in the form of ten necessary chemical elements, this sexual 

 development has been going on. The rabbits and the birds and 

 the field mice have played about the corn, men have paced the 

 rows, and driven tools into the ground about the roots, una- 

 ware or heedless of the tremendous and eternal forces silently 

 at work in the green plants. Only when the stamen sheaths 

 burst, and the proud tassels are uplifted above the waving, 

 leafy green, the sowers of the corn stand back, conscious that 

 the great drama of the fields is beginning. 



For a day or two the stamens dominate a world which is 

 completely male. No trace of the corn's female nature yet 

 escapes the husks folded about the ears. Do the maiden cells 

 ranged in patient rows along the ears know that their lovers 

 are waiting without, impatient and ardent? What deep bio- 

 logical necessity, all the stronger for the shyness which sur- 

 rounds it, urges the silk to quicken its growth until the eager 

 tentacles stretch beyond the open ends of the husks? 



In the dry, still heat of August even the lightest breeze 

 shakes the ripe pollen from the anthers of the stamen's flowers. 

 The male pollen blows over the cornfields in a fine golden 

 mist. For a week that rain goes on until eighteen million 



