78 PitOSERPINA. 



for my own pupils, to put the four names altogether into 

 English. Instead of calling the whole thing a pistil, I 

 shall simply call it the pillar. Instead of ' ovary,' I shall 

 say ' Treasury ' (for a seed isn't an egg, but it is a treasure). 

 The style I shall call the * Shaft,' and the stigma the 

 ' Volute.' So you will have your entire pillar divided into 

 the treasury, at its base, the shaft, and the volute ; and I 

 think you will find these divisions easily remembered, and 

 not unfitted to the sense of the words in their ordinary 

 use. 



18. Hound this central, but, in the poppy, very stumpy, 

 pillar, you find a cluster of dark threads, with dusty pen- 

 dants or cups at their ends. For these, the botanists' 

 name ' stamens,' may be conveniently retained, 'each con- 

 sisting of a ' filament,' or thread, and an ' anther,' or blos- 

 soming part. 



And in this rich corolla, and pillar, or pillars, with 

 their treasuries, and surrounding crowd of stamens, the 

 essential flower consists. Fewer than these several parts, 

 it cannot have, to be a flower at all ; of these, the corolla 

 leads, and is the object of final purpose. The stamens 

 and the treasuries are only there in order to produce future 

 corollas, though often themselves decorati^ in the highest 

 degree. 



These, I repeat, are all the essential parts of a flower. 

 But it would have been difficult, with any other than the 

 poppy, to have shown you them alone ; for nearly all 

 other flowers keep with them, all their lives, their nurse 



