Cuckoo-Pint. 241 



flowers ; each of them represents a single very de- 

 graded blossom, and each will grow out at a later stage 

 into one of the bright scarlet berries which form such 

 beautiful objects in the hedgerow and waysides during 

 the autumn months. We could not possibly have a 

 simpler type of flower than these lowest pistil-bearing 

 blossoms ; they are in fact the central floral notion 

 reduced to its ideally simplest terms. They consist 

 each of a single rudimentary berry, containing a 

 single seed, and crowned by a little point or stigma, 

 which is the sensitive surface to be fertilised by the 

 pollen from the other flowers. 



In the middle, here, come the flowers of this 

 second or pollen-bearing sort, each of which again 

 consists of naked stamens ; that is to say, each flower 

 is here reduced to one solitary part, analogous to the 

 little pollen-sacs that you see hanging out in the 

 centre of a tiger lily or most other conspicuous gar- 

 den blossoms. Every such stamen is made up of two 

 tiny bags, which open when ripe and discharge their 

 golden pollen. Though the pollen looks to the naked 

 eye like mere yellow dust, yet, when put under a 

 microscope, it is seen to consist of small egg-like 

 bodies, having a characteristic shape and appearance 

 in each different flower, exactly as the seeds and fruits 

 have to the naked eye. With these two essential 



