They also say the Impatiens Family is a branch of the geraniums and the pelargoniums, which you know we _always_ call geraniums. The crane’s bills and herb Roberts and all _their_ near relations of course are geraniums, and some say the wood sorrels belong to this distinguished family. Whether these all belong to one family or not, one thing is certain: they are all agreeable to us, and are not so very numerous even when taken all together. The whole of them do not number half so many as do the branches of the Convolvulus Family. Like the race of white people, they belong principally to temperate climates. They do not all belong to _our_ climate, however. The nasturtiums, for instance, are South Americans and Mexicans. They like to keep warm better than some other members of their family, and their seeds cannot, as a rule, live through our cold winters. But if we gather the seeds and put them away out of the fierce winter cold and plant them in the spring, then the nasturtiums will grow their best and please us with their bright flowers. We cannot help liking them, they are so jolly with their gay flowers and their round leaves with twisting stalks. We like them, too, because the flower stem curls up and draws the seeds under the leaves out of the way of the young buds that are waiting to bloom. I do not know whether wild nasturtiums are as large and bright as the cultivated ones. Very likely not, as people have taken great pains to make them large and bright by selecting the seeds of the largest flowers from year to year and giving them good soil in which to grow. Perhaps the members of the Geranium Family we really know best are the pelargoniums from the Cape of Good Hope. It is about as warm in their African home as it is in our Florida, so of course they cannot live out of doors through our cold Northern winters. But we take them in the house when cold weather comes, and sometimes put them in the cellar. Of course they do not grow much in the cellar, but they _rest_ there, and when they are taken out in the spring are all ready to wake up and blossom. The whole Geranium Family seems to take extra care of its seeds. We know how the nasturtium curls up its stem so as to draw the seeds below the leaves out of the way, giving the buds a chance to come out, and also protecting the seeds. The pelargoniums do not do that, but they do something much more elaborate for the sake of their seed-children, as we know. They give them a parachute to fly with, for one thing. A parachute, you know, is a contrivance by which bodies can be sustained in the air while falling or blowing along in the wind. But the parachute is not all,—they give them an auger by which to bore into the ground and plant themselves. [Illustration: [Pelargonium]] The North American crane’s bill seeds perform in a very similar way, their flowers and seed-cases being quite like those of the pelargonium.