50 WAYSIDE WEEDS. 



" Gl-od nught hare made the earth ining forth 

 Enough for great and small ; 

 The oak-tree and the cedar-tree, 

 Without a floirer at all. 



" He might have made enough, enough, 

 For every want of ours ; 

 For medicine, luxury, and toil. 

 And yet bare made no flowers." 



And trutli it is that, for aught we can see, we 

 might hare had all essential means of seed pro- 

 duction without that beauty which He who made 

 all things has lavished upon the lilies of the field. 

 Calyx and corolla are apparently non-essential to 

 seeding, and yet we cannot but imagine that they 

 subserve some office of greater or less importance 

 beyond dehghting the eye. 



THE CALYX 



Of a plant has its first office in the protection of 

 the flower-bud — covering the tender organs within, 

 until their time for full expansion has come. Then 

 it assumes various modes of procedure. We have 

 seen, as in the poppy (Fig. 39), it may be cast off 

 as the blossom opens, separating in one piece like 

 an extinguisher, and allowing the petals, which 

 seem to have been crumpled up within it, to expand 

 in their full size and beauty. 



More generally, however, the calyx remains for 

 a longer or shorter time after the flower blows, and 

 in many plants it is still there after the petals of 



