52 NATURE STUDY 



corner of the forest demand a place in the school-room. Their 

 beauty and grace often are recognized, but in addition to their 

 simple charms of form and color their deeper meaning as the 

 active factors essential in an important part of the life of the plant 

 make them most profitable material for lessons in careful obser- 

 vation and clear thinking. They show more clearly and in a 

 more interesting way than do most other parts of the plant 

 how it adapts itself to the conditions in which it ex. ts. It is in 

 the flower that the ingenuity of the plant rises to the highest 

 pitch. Its contrivances in the forms of baits and traps are so 

 plain and need so little of difficult learning to understand them' 

 that they appeal immediately to the youngest and oldest member 

 of the school. As in the lesson with seeds, their distribution 

 and germination, so here seeing the plant do something 

 to its own advantage adds greatly to the clearer insight of the 

 greatest fact in the knowledge of living organisms, that of, 

 adaptation, that is the fitting of the organism to the world ot 

 nature around it to its best advantage. 



A knowledge of certain facts must precede these lessons, but 

 as this knowledge is of immediate use, it is easily imparted and 

 received. 



First, it is to be known that the work of the flower is to pro- 

 duce the seeds. Next it is convenient to know the parts of the 

 flower. Any common iiower will answer to teach this lesson, but 

 in the first lesson a good-sized one such as the popp3' has advan- 

 tages over small ones. In the lessons on seeds it was seen where 

 the ripened seeds were tound. It is a good point to begin with] 

 in learning the parts of the flower to determine where in thei 

 flower the minute beginnings of the seeds are placed. 



These are easily seen in the poppy. This part of the flower 

 is the pistil. The part of the pistil containing young seeds or 

 those things that are to be seeds is the ovary. This ends above in a 

 short stem supporting four threads, each bearing a surface called a 



