88 
THE YOUNG SCIENTIST. 
outstretched arms, and its massiveness, 
with the curving grace of the elm. Lucy 
noticed there were dry leaves on it. 
These," said I, "are the leaves of last 
season, and have remained all winter, so we 
<}all them persistent; but they will soon be 
replaced by fresh ones. The beech also has 
persistent leaves. Pines and firs keep their 
leaves, but these are called evergreen, be- 
cause they do not change their color." 
Here Amy, who had drawn near, observed 
that she had seen the ground beneath pines 
strewn with their sweet brown needles, and 
asked when pines had new leaves. I an- 
swered that the leaves of pines remained 
for two or more years, but that the fall of 
their old leaves and the growth of new ones 
were gradual, so that the tree was never 
bare. 
"See that crooked stem," said Charlie, 
*' it has twined about that bush by its side. 
What is it?" 
"That," I answered, " is a grapevine, and 
in tropical countries, vines of various kinds 
become so thick and strong, they form an 
almost impenetrable tangle in the forests." 
We were now approaching the brook, 
which, swollen by the recent rains, loudly 
murmured in its stony bed. 
"Hal! Hal!" from many voices, "there 
are some beautiful yellow flowers in the 
brook. Please get them for us?" 
Hal bravely stepped in, and brought back 
a cluster of March marigolds, fresh and 
glistening, from the water. The children 
crowded about me, to hear what I could tell 
them about the flowers, but I proposed that 
they should ramble about, and get what 
other flowers they could, and then we would 
find some dry seats under the oaks, and ex- 
amine our treasures. This we did, and 
presently, with well-filled boxes, gathered 
under one of the venerable oaks. 
"Let us look first at the marigold," (Fig. 
1) said I, and taking up a specimen, and bid- 
ding each to take one, we began to examine 
it. " The botanical name of your flower is 
Caltha palustris; look now at the whole 
plant, as you did before at the tree; it has, 
like every other plant, its own individual 
look, and that we call the faciei;^ of the plant. 
Look at it more closely; it has a stifi", round 
stem, furrowed, bearing two or three leaves, 
and one to three smaller stems, each termin- 
ated by a flower; the leaf has a broad rounded 
form, (Fig. 2) or is kidney shaped; it is a 
simple leaf, with the margin beautifully 
scolloped. The lower leaves are on shorti 
stems — petioles — but the upper one has a 
very short petiole, and is almost sessile, 
which word means to be directly inserted 
upon the receptacle." 
Here Amy, who had been turning the 
flower about in her finders, exclaimed, 
" Why, where is the calyx?" 
" What makes you think there is no 
calyx?" said I. 
" I thought the calyx was always green," 
answered she, "but these petals are yel- 
low." 
"Sometimes," I answered, " the calyx is 
delicate and beautifully colored, like a cor- 
olla. This is the case with the Caltha; its 
golden cup is made up of sepals, of which 
there are five (Fig. 3), and there are no pe- 
tals; the sepals are parts of the calyx, and 
the petals parts of the corolla. Eemove 
the sepals, and you will see many stamens 
(Fig. 4), and these plucked ofi", you will see 
in their midst several pistils." (Fig. 5). 
Here, with the point of my knife, I cut out 
a stamen (Fig. 8) and pistil (Fig. 6) from 
the flower cup, and, placing my magnifying 
glass before them, exhibited them to the 
children. Again using my knife, I cut a pis- 
til through vertically (Fig. 7), that its inter- 
nal structure might be seen. Having passed 
it about the circle of children, I explained 
that these little bodies which they saw 
within it were ovules which would ripen 
into seeds; the part of the pistil which con- 
tained them was called the ovary, and its 
cavity a cell. This ovary was one-celled. 
"Do you think of any flower this Caltha 
resembles?" I inquired. 
" Yes," spoke up Mary, "it looks like a 
buttercup. " 
"It belongs," said I, "to the same fam- 
ily, and the flowers of this family, though 
showing great diversity of form, are united 
