"It is covered up. There is a very small scale, or leaf, over it to protect it from those insects who have no right to the honey. But the bee knows how to get at it, and he does so very quickly, once he alights on the blossom, as we have just seen one do. For while he appeared as if he were merely tumbling clumsily around on the flower he was sampling those honey-sacks, and we saw how speedily he finished all five of them on this flower and then buzzed busily away to the other." "He was just the same as at dinner, then, wasn't he mamma! But why did he go to the other flower--didn't he get all he wanted from this one?" "No, darlingest, he gets but very little from each flower. If he could take all he wanted from one he would never fly right to another. And then, if all the other insects should do the same, the whole plan of nature would fall through and there would soon be no life on earth." Elsie's eyes looked very large when she heard this. "Would I die, and you, mamma, and all of us--Alice and Rosie, and, oh, everybody we know?" "Yes, dearie, all of us. Those few simple plants which still, in the primitive way, fertilize themselves, are not enough and are too weak to carry on the vegetation of the earth, and without the insects and birds and the wind we never should have been born at all; for they are necessary to make the plants reproduce their kinds and grow, and the plants are necessary food for us as well as for the animals that we eat, such as the hens and ducks and sheep and cows. So nature has given each flower only a little honey, not enough for the bee, and he is compelled to fly to many before he becomes satisfied. And this brings us back to the stamen and ovary again, to show what they are for and how the bee marries the two plants together after he has collected his fee of delicious honey." "I am all 'tention," said Elsie, in so quaint an imitation of older folks that her mother was forced to smile, knowing that she had a listener that was interested, to say the least--a listener who felt the importance and gravity of the study which they were now pursuing. Elsie never attempted big words except when she felt dignified. IV THE PAPA AND MAMMA PARTS OF THE PLANTS "Now," said Mrs. Edson, taking hold of the buttercup again, "you see here, at the top of each stamen, the slight enlargement that I mentioned. It looks like a kind of knob, and it really is a hard, hollow sack, or bag, containing a fine yellow powder, which is called pollen. Is that plain so far, dearie?" "Pollen, yes, mamma! And do you wish me to remember that name too?"