1^2 THE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. 
he could not see them, would not the sweet scent tell 
him where to come and look for them? And so we 
see that the pretty sweet-scented corolla is not only 
delightful for us to look at and to smell, but it is 
really very useful in helping the primrose to make 
strong healthy seeds out of which the young plants 
are to grow next year. 
And now let us see what we have learned. We be- 
gan with a tiny seed, though we did not then know 
how this seed had been made. We saw the plantlet 
buried in it, and learned how it fed at first on prepared 
food, but soon began to make living matter for itself 
out of gases taken from the water and the air. How 
ingeniously it pumped up the water through the cells 
to its stomach the leaves ! And how marvellously 
the sun-waves entering there formed the little green 
granules, and then helped them to make food and 
living protoplasm ! At this point we might have gone 
further, and studied how the fibres and all the different 
vessels of the plant are formed, and a wondrous his- 
tory it would have been. But it was too long for one 
hour's lecture, and you must read it for yourselves in 
books on botany. We had to pass on to the flower, 
and learn the use of the covering leaves, the gaily col- 
oured crown attracting the insects, the dust-bags hold- 
ing the pollen, the little ovules each with the germ 
of a new plantlet, lying hidden in the seed-vessel, wait- 
ing for the pollen-grains to grow down to them. 
Lastly, when the pollen crept in at the tiny opening 
we learned that the ovule had now all it wanted to 
grow into a perfect seed. 
