6 EXPLANATION OF THE FRONTISPIECE. 



fruits. On the left is a strange-looking tree, resembling a gigan- 

 tic fern ; this is the sago tree.* Further in the background we 

 see the well-known oak, with its spreading branches ; and far off 

 on the horizon appears the outline of the banyan tree (see page 

 14). Coming back to the foreground of the picture, we see a 

 little to the left of the centre a huge stalk of Indian corn, with 

 its full ears of ripened fruit; its barren, staminate-nowers are 

 conspicuous as a feathery crown at the summit of the stem ; (see 

 page 159, ZEA) yet, though they have no fruit, they are essential 

 in the vegetable economy to the production of the fruit from the 

 pistillate flowers below, now changed into the golden corn, every 

 thread of silk having been a long pistil to which the germ or in- 

 fant seed was attached.! 



* Cycas circinalis. See Plate VII. Lincoln's Botany. 



| See Lincoln's Botany, Natural Order, Graminacese, f age 293. 



