NEWS OF SPRING 



sweet-scented cluster inhabited by a most skilled mechanic. 

 There is no one, even among the least countrified, but knows 

 the good Sage. It is an unpretending Lahiata and bears a very 

 modest flower, which opens violently, like a hungry mouth, to 

 snatch the passing rays of the sun. For that matter, it pre- 

 sents a large number of varieties, not all of which — this is a 

 curious detail — have adopted or carried to the same pitch 

 of perfection the system of fertilization which we are about 

 to examine. But I am concerned here only with the most 

 common Sage, that which, at this moment, as though to cele- 

 brate spring's passage, covers with violet draperies all the 

 walls of my terraces of olive-trees. I assure you that the 

 balconies of the great marble palaces that await the kings were 

 never more luxuriously, more happily, more fragrantly 

 adorned. One seems to catch the very perfumes of the light 

 of the sun at its hottest, when the noon of day strikes. . . . 

 To come to details, the stigma, or female organ, of the 

 flower is contained in the upper lip, which forms a sort of 

 hood, wherein are also the two stamens, or male organs. To 

 prevent these from fertilizing the stigma which shares the 

 same nuptial tent, this stigma is twice as long as they, so that 

 they have no hope of reaching it. Moreover, in order to 



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