SUMMER FLOWERS 113 



an embryo plant. Or, to put it in another way, the carpels 

 bear possible seeds or ovules, which become real seeds when 

 the fertilising golden dust penetrates into them. 



It was a very important unifying and clarifying dis- 

 covery, in which the poet Goethe had a large share, that the 

 flower is really made up of four tiers of leaves, adapted to 

 different uses protective and steadying leaves, protective 

 and attractive leaves, pollen-making leaves, and seed-making 

 leaves. The different parts all grow out of the flower-stalk 

 as leaves do, and they often hark back to their primary con- 

 dition for instance, when the plant is overfed. A Canter- 

 bury bell may become a crowded green tuft, and most 

 " double " flowers are due to stamens becoming petaloid. 

 Another argument (out of many) may be found in the flower 

 of the water-lily, where the substantial green sepals pass 

 quite gradually into white petals, and these narrow into 

 straps, which pass into yellow stamens. In this flower and 

 others like it we find it difficult to tell where sepals stop and 

 petals begin, or where petals stop and stamens begin. In 

 such ways we may convince ourselves that, though the four 

 parts of the flower have different names and forms and uses, 

 they have, fundamentally, a common nature, for they are all 

 leaves, transformed in various ways and combining to fulfil 

 the plant's chief end that it should produce seeds which 

 will bear next year's flowers. This was a discovery of the 

 same nature as one of older date that the forelimb of a 

 frog, the paddle of a turtle, the wing of a bird, the flipper of 

 a whale, the wing of a bat, and the arm of man, and so forth, 

 are all fundamentally the same in essential structure and in 

 mode of development ; but the discovery of the nature of 

 the flower was perhaps a greater illumination. 



In one of the letters in Fors Clavigera, Ruskin com- 

 mented somewhat savagely on the kind of botany that 

 rejoiced in proving that there was " no such thing as a 



