"Yes, dearie, many plants have both a mother and a father part, which grow near together in the same flower, while other plants have only a father part, and still others have only a mother part. This buttercup has both, has both the male and the female principle. The ovary is the female, and here, above it and surrounding it, you see a number of taller spires, yellow in color and each of them bearing a tiny enlargement, a kind of knob, at the top." "Yes, yes, but that--that can't be the papa part! Is it, mamma?" she cried, examining the rather insignificant appearing spires dubiously. "They don't look much like a--a papa!" she said in some disappointment. Her mother laughed. "They certainly do not look much like a man-papa," she returned, "but they form the papa part of the plant, nevertheless, and are truly the papas of the baby buttercups. And their name is the second one that I wish you to remember from now on. It is stamen." "Stamen!" said Elsie. "Yes, each of these stems is called a stamen, and they form the male part of the plant, the father part. Many plants, those of the simpler kinds, have only one stamen and it grows in the flower so that its head hangs right above the ovary. Here you see that all of the stamens are above the ovary, and the reason why they are placed there by nature you will see very soon. What I wish now is to show you why the bee came to the flower." "I know--it was for honey! Isn't that what you said before, mamma?" "Yes, darling, but do you see any honey here?" "No, mamma, and I never knew before that buttercups had honey. I always thought honey came from a beehive." "It does come to us from a beehive, but it comes from flowers first, and one of the many kinds that furnish it is this buttercup. The bee sips it from the flowers, just a tiny bit from each blossom that he visits, and when he has enough he takes it home to the hive and puts it away to eat by-and-by, in the winter, when there are no flowers growing for him to rifle. He does it just as men lay away money for 'a rainy day,' as we say, and as squirrels lay up a store of nuts for the cold weather. Now, suppose you count those flattened, round-cornered parts of the buttercup--how many are there?" "Five," said Elsie quickly. "Yes, there are five of them, and they are called petals. You will notice that they are much narrower and slighter at the bottom than they are at the top. It is at the bottom that they are joined to the central part of the flower. Now, just where they are connected with this central part there is a tiny sack of honey." "It must be _very_ tiny," said Elsie, regarding the slender connection earnestly, "for there isn't room enough for much, I'm sure. And it must be all covered up, for I can't see any signs of it."