112 THE STORY OF THE PLANTS. 



however, you can still, as a rule, detect the sepals 

 by their habit of overlapping the petals in the 

 bud). Then they have a set of six stamens. Inside 

 that again they have a single ovary, but if you 

 cut it across with a penknife you will see at once 

 it contains three chambers, each as a rule with 

 several seeds; and these three chambers are a 

 memory of the time when the ovary consisted of 

 three separate carpels. From their midst arises 

 a single long style; but you may observe all the 

 same that it is made up of three original and dis- 

 tinct styles, because it divides at the top into three 

 stigmas or sensitive surfaces. This is the general 

 plan of the lily group ; but in certain individual 

 lilies the stigma is undivided, and in others again 

 the parts are increased to four or even to eight, so 

 as to obscure the primitive threefold arrange- 

 ment. 



Most of the large and handsome lilies culti- 

 vated in gardens have perianths of separate pieces, 

 such as one knows so well in the tiger-lily, the 

 Turk's-cap lily, and the beautiful Japanese lilium 

 auratum. They have also abundant honey, stored 

 in a deep groove of the spotted petals, and they 

 are variegated and lined in such a way as to 

 guide insects direct to their store of nectar. But 

 the family has been so successful with the higher 

 insects, and has produced such an extraordinary 

 variety of very beautiful and brilliant flowers, 

 that it is quite impossible to speak of them in 

 detail. A few among them, like our own wild 

 hyacinth, show a slight tendency on the part of 

 the petals and sepals to unite into a bell-shaped 

 tube ; still, even here the pieces are really distinct 

 and separate. But in the true garden hyacinth 

 the pieces unite into a tubular perianth, like the 



