HOW PLANTS MARRY. 



79 



plants — the chapter which tells us how they 

 marry and are given in marriage. 



In order that you may fully understand this 

 curious and delightful subject, however, I shall 

 have to begin by telling you a few preliminary 

 points less interesting in themselves, and, I fear, 

 at times not a little troublesome. 



Flowers are the husbands and wives of plants. 

 And in some 

 plants the sexes 

 are as fully sepa- 

 rated as in birds 

 or beasts; when 

 once you know 

 them, you can 

 distinguish at 

 sight a male 

 from a female 

 flower as readily 

 as you can dis- 

 tinguish a bull ^^^' 13' — ^» MALE, & B, FEMALE PLOWER 



from a cow or ^^ ^ sedge, much magnified. The 

 , .' sexes are here quite distinct and 



a peacock from unlike, 

 a peahen (Fig. 



13). But in other cases the sexes are muddled 

 up in the same blossom or on the same plant in 

 a way that makes it rather difficult to understand 

 their true nature without a little pains and some 

 close attention. 



So we must go back a bit for light to the 

 lower plants. Here we find no flowers at all, 

 and in the very lowest cases of any nothing in 

 the least resembling a blossom. Very simple 

 plants, in fact, have two ways of reproducing. 



