SCARLET GERANIUMS. 155 



common and so well known a plant, it has some strange 

 peculiarities of structure which escape the notice of 

 ninety-nine out of a hundred among those who have seen 

 it familiarly in their gardens or their vases from child- 

 hood upward. Pick a truss of the bright red blossoms 

 from the plant we have no despotic gardener here to 

 frown at us for meddling with our own belongings and 

 then nip off a single flower from the head, close to the 

 point where the clustered bundle joins the main stem. 

 Perhaps you have never observed before that the single 

 flower-stalks are each slightly humpbacked : there is a 

 sort of knob on the stalk about a quarter of an inch 

 above the junction with the stem ; and from that knob 

 upward the stalk grows twice as thick as below. Again, 

 look at the flower full in front, and you will observe, 

 what perhaps has hitherto escaped your notice, that all 

 five petals are not equal and similar, but that the blossom 

 is bilateral instead of radially symmetrical ; it has two 

 upper petals distinctly different in shape from the three 

 lower ones. The upper pair are narrower, and stand on 

 rather long claws ; the lower trio are broader, and have 

 no claw. Now, pull off the two upper petals, and you 

 will see that behind them there lies a deep pouch or 

 tube, running along the top of the flower-stalk as far as 

 the knob. Cut the stalk across, and you will find it 

 hollow on the top ; cut it down lengthwise, and, if you 

 follow up the pouch throughout its whole length, you 

 will learn that it leads at last to a drop of honey, secreted 

 in the furthest recesses of the knob. To put it shortly, 

 what seems the flower-stalk is really a stalk and a nectar- 

 bearing spur run into one. How this has happened, and 

 why it has happened, one can easily understand by the 



