"Do you know, Davy," said the Chief Gardener, "I was just wondering about that, too." III THE SUN IS THE GREATEST OF ALL CHEMISTS IT was about a week later, that one afternoon little Prue and Davy and the Chief Gardener were helping big Prue with her roses, and admiring all the different kinds. Little Prue had been thinking a good deal about roses since the story of the Princess Beautiful, and wondering just which of the climbing red ones had grown about her grave. Then she began to wonder about all the kinds, and how they came. She spoke about this now, as her mamma pointed out one which she said was a new rose--just offered for sale that year. "Where did it come from?" asked the little girl, "where do new roses come from?" "From seed," answered the Chief Gardener, "like the new peaches and apples I told you of. Roses belong to the same family, you know, and they are grafted much in the same way. Then the seeds are planted, and from these, fine new kinds are likely to come. Rose-growers are always trying hard to make new kinds by mixing the pollen. The pollen, you remember, is the yellow powder on the little tips of the stamens. These tips, as I believe I told you, are called anthers, and the slender part of the stamen is the filament. It is the pollen falling from the anthers upon the single green stem or pistil in the center of the flower that produces the seed. The pistil is divided in parts, too. The little top piece is called the stigma, and the slender green stem is called the style. The pollen falls on the stigma and is drawn down through the style to give life to the seed-pod below." [Illustration: THE ROSE STAMENS AND PISTIL WHICH PRODUCE THE SEED] The Chief Gardener picked the bloom of a single bramble rose and pulled it apart to show the children all these things. "Now," he went on, "gardeners often take a rose of one kind and color and shake it gently over a rose of another kind and color, so that the pollen will fall from the anthers of one upon the stigma of the other. In this way the seeds are mixed and it may happen that wonderful new roses come from those seeds. Sometimes, instead of shaking the rose, the gardener carefully takes up the pollen on a tiny soft brush and lays it gently on the stigma of the other rose, all of which has to be done as soon as the bloom is open. Of course, such roses are kept to themselves, and labeled, and the seeds are carefully labeled also." Davy and Prue were both interested. "Oh, can I make some new kinds of roses," asked little Prue, greatly excited. "Can I, Mamma?" "You may try, but I am afraid you will not be very successful where all the roses are out here in the open air. Still, it will do no harm to see what will happen, and you might get something very wonderful." "I am already trying for a new kind of peach," said Davy. "And if you get a good one we will call it the 'Early David,'" laughed the Chief Gardener. "And what will you call my rose?"