32 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
Fig. 2.—Male flower of 
the Melon. 
A very simple and very interesting experiment will prove this. Gather 
from a bed, far removed from your own, flowers similar to those that you had 
entirely removed. Shake these flowers over a sheet of paper, to gather the 
dust from the pouches; then return to your own bed, where none but the 
swollen flowers remain; choose some of them, and place 
with a camel’s-hair pencil a little of the dust on the humid 
crests which crown the central column. It is necessary to 
practise this operation under a bright sun ; put only a little 
of the dust on each flower, and apply it in such a way that 
the grains should be fixed by the clammy surface of the 
crests, and that the wind cannot carry it to the neighbouring 
flowers. It will be important, also, that you cover the bed 
with fine gauze to prevent the entrance of insects. All the 
flowers that were powdered will take development and produce Melons ; those 
that have not been touched will remain sterile ; and it therefore follows that 
the dust contained in the pouches is indispensable to the fecundation of the 
swollen flowers. 
This experiment, and many others not less conclusive, which you shall be 
made acquainted with hereafter, show in a decided manner that vegetables are 
reproduced by true eggs, called ovules; and that the subtle 
dust contained in the small pouches serves the purpose of 
fecundating these ovules, which, immediately they are fecun¬ 
dated, increase in size, through the cords by which they are 
suspended, and which transmit to them the nutriment they 
require for their development and maturation, until they 
become perfect seeds, when they become detached from their 
parent, and themselves become plants similar to that which 
produced them. 
You already know the functions of the central organ, of the stamens which 
surround it, and of the exterior envelope. We shall now show you what is the 
office of the coloured and fragrant envelope which is placed inside of the latter, 
and which is popularly called the leaves of the flower. Is it for man alone that 
God has created this part of the plant ? Is it to please 
our eyes, our smell, our touch, that He has so lavished 
on these leaves the brilliant colours, the varied forms, 
the penetrating perfumes, and the velvety tissue that 
we so much admire in flowers ? While admitting this 
belief, which is founded on human pride as much as on 
religious sentifaent, cannot you suspect that this orna¬ 
ment of flowers has been given them for their own in¬ 
dividual use ? This is a question the examination of 
which is not without interest, and we shall now proceed 
to investigate the subject. 
We have just stated that the dust contained in the pouches which form the 
heads of the stamens is the agent necessary to the fecundation of the eggs, 
which ultimately become seeds. But how is this dust conveyed to the humid 
and spongy crest of the central organ ? In many plants the stamens rise 
higher than it; they are close round it, and the dust, in issuing from the 
pouches, is easily brought in contact with the summit of the organ which con¬ 
tains the eggs or ovules. In many others the pouches are much shorter than 
the central column ; but this does not destroy fecundation, because, in such a 
case, the flower is inclined in such a way that the summit of the central organ 
is found below the pouches, the dust from which, in being discharged, easily 
falls upon it. But it often happens that the flower remains erect, and then the 
Fig. 3.—Stamen of 
the Melon mag¬ 
nified. 
