96 Life and Love. 



high office of love once fulfilled, the petals fade and 

 fall, the empty stamens too fall away, and there is 

 left of the flowers only the ovary to go on growing 

 until the seeds are perfected. 



Since petals and stamens and pistils are but 

 transformed leaves, one is not surprised to find all 

 stages of transformation observable in some flowers. 

 In the water-lily can often be seen all stages of 

 stamen forming, from the perfect anther with its 

 filament, to the petal tipped with a half-formed 

 anther. All double flowers are so at the expense 

 of the essential organs, as stamens and pistil very 

 justly are called. An extra row of petals means 

 one row the less of stamens. A double rose some- 

 times has all the stamens and even the pistils con- 

 verted into petals. As a rule, double flowers are 

 the result of cultivation, the plant depending upon 

 man for such care that it shall be preserved, and 

 not troubling to form the reproductive cells and 

 enclose them in protecting walls. 



The tall, spotted lily, however, so familiar in old 

 gardens, cannot trust its reproduction wholly to 

 seeds, but in the angle of each leaf gives off little 

 round black bulbs which are tiny reproductions of 

 the parent plant. 



These little bulbs, reminding us of the sprouting 

 of those worms that do not wait for the egg- 

 development, fall off, and in time may grow, having 

 impressed upon them in some mj'sterious way the 

 whole personality of the parent plant. 



