the painter of “The Horse Fair”. To have been instru- 
mental in making our gardens and parks rich in varieties of 
lilac, gladioli and sweet peas, and giving happiness and inspira- 
tion to millions of people is certainly an achievement as valuable 
to humanity as the work of Edisons and Alexander Graham Bells. 
In such work, in addition to the satisfaction that comes from the 
good that one is doing, there is the joy of independent accom- 
plishment, the feeling of having actually created out of common- 
place materials something absolutely new and unique, such as 
an American Beauty rose, or a picotee sweet pea, for in all wild 
Nature you would hunt in vain for such flowers. 
But more even than these, the amateur gardener and plant 
breeder has the pleasure of actually watching the laws of nature 
at work creating a new form from an old one, a process by which 
our old earth has covered itself with the myriads of kinds of 
plants that abound in every forest and field about us. 
In order intelligently to bring into being these new forms of 
plant life, it is first necessary to know something about the parts 
of a flower and the method by which a seed is produced. 
Flowers in the ordinary sense are bright-colored, showy things 
that give color to a garden or look pretty on a woman’s dress. 
Flowers in a scientific sense are the seed manufactories of a great 
group of plants, comprising more than 125,000 kinds or species. 
Some, such as those of wheat, beets, blue-grass and willow, are 
very inconspicuous and barely noticeable. Others, such as orchids, 
cannas, sunflowers, and dandelions, are very showy and often 
strikingly beautiful. 
Flowers, then, are the preliminary arrangements to the birth 
of new plants, the precursors of seeds; in reality, as I said before, 
the plants’ seed manufactories. For convenience, examine a 
flower, such as the Easter-lily, and you will find it to consist of 
at least three general parts, put together on the plan of three 
circles, one within the other. The first circle (the showy white 
portion) is composed of petals and sepals, three of each; the next 
circle, of stamens, or male organs, six in number; and the third 
or innermost circle, of pistils or female organs, three in number, 
but united with each other so as to resemble one. The outer 
whorls are generally regarded as a protection to the two inner 
circles, though, in cases where they are bright-colored, they may 
serve also in attracting butterflies, moths and beetles, which help 
in bringing about cross-pollination. In flowers, such as peas and 
tobacco, this outer circle or protective envelope consists of one 
green circle and one bright-colored circle. The stamens are each 
made up of a stem with one or two little bags full of a mealy dust 
called pollen. The pistil is usually a flask-shaped receptacle, 
sticky at the upper end, and full of little sack-like bodies at its 
