18 SPRING FLOWERS. 



Easter- tide, that no fruit is ever borne by these specious 

 catkins. Yet it is so. Near at hand however will be found 

 other bushes with other catkins, without the alluring hue of 

 gold, and these on closer inspection will be seen to consist 

 of the pale-green silky ovaries or young fruits, surmounted 

 by the forked stigmas, intended to catch the dust that flies 

 off from the catkins of the golden hue, which dust is borne 

 to the ovary-bearing or female plant by the agency of insects 

 or on the wings of the wind. Thus even the rude blast, 

 annoying though it sometimes may appear to be, has its 

 appointed office to perform in Nature's laboratory, one of 

 which is to carry the fertilizing powder or pollen from 

 plant to plant, and thus to secure the fulfilment of the 

 appointed law by which each herb and tree bears seed after 

 its kind. 



The remaining principal division of the Flowering Plants, is 

 that which is called Monocotyledons, the chief peculiarities 

 of which have been already pointed out in referring to the 

 Snowdrop and Crocus. The two flowers just named belong 

 to the regular-flowered natural families in which the ovary is 

 inferior, or developed beneath the other parts of the flower, 

 which thus appear to grow from the top of the ovary. Our 

 spring flowers however afford us some illustrations of the Orchi- 

 deous family, a peculiar series of Monocotyledons in which 

 the flowers are remarkably irregular, and also of the Lilia- 

 ceous family, a natural group of regular-flowered Monocoty- 

 ledons in which the ovary is superior, the other parts of the 

 flower being developed from beneath it, so that it is enclosed 

 by them. 



Let us examine more closely the specimens of the Orchida- 

 ceous family, first taking the Spotted Palmate Orchis of our 



