88 PROSERPINA. 



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. 



1 8. Round this central, but, in the poppy, very 

 stumpy, pillar, you find a cluster of dark threads, 

 with dusty pendants or cups at their ends. For 

 these the botanists' name 'stamens,' may be con- 

 veniently retained, each consisting of a 'filament,' or 

 thread, and an 'anther,' or blossoming 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 decorative 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 



