FLOWER STAMENS AND PISTILS. 9 



How pretty it is inside the corolla. Do you see 

 this ring of little yellow things ? They are like 

 golden threads with knobs upon the ends of them. 

 If you could see them through a glass, which would 

 make them seem larger, they would be like little 

 yellow bags of dust, each placed upon a stalk, (cf. 

 Fig. 23a.) 



These are called stamens. (Fig. 6.) 

 Rub them with your finger, and you will 

 see upon it the yellow dust from their 

 little bags. Both the bags and the dust 

 which they have in them are very 

 different in shape and size in different 

 kinds of flowers so also are the stalks Fig. 6. A Sta- 

 on which the bags are placed. In some men ' 

 flowers these little stalks are wanting. 



As we go along, we may find a cuckoo-flower, a 

 white dead nettle, a piece of May ; or a poppy, fox- 

 glove, or wild rose. (Fig. 5.) In any of these you 

 will see the stamens very clearly. In some flowers 

 there are many of them, as in the buttercup ; but in 

 some the stamens are few, and they do not always 

 have the bright yellow colour of these we have been 

 looking at in the buttercup. 



But there is one more part of the perfect flower for 

 you yet to learn, and it is in the middle of all. This is 

 called the pistil another hard name for you to 

 remember, but it is the last. Like the stamen, the 

 pistil has a kind of bag, or bags, but instead of being 



