The process of fecundation appears to be as follows: As soon as the calyx and corolla are fully expanded, the stamens rapidly develop, their filaments elongate, and the anthers, at first moist and closed, become dry, and, rupturing, discharge the pollen on the stigma of the pistil, which at this time is bedewed with a clammy fluid, which serves to retain the grains of pollen that fall upon its surface. The grains of pollen, after remaining for some time on the humid stigma, absorb its moisture, and are seen to swell so that those which are elliptical assume a spherical form. The thin and highly extensible intine or inner covering of the pollen grain ultimately is pushed, in the form of a tube, through one of the pores or ostioles in the surface of the extine or outer covering, the mode of dehiscence of the pollen grain being always determined by the character of its surface. The pollen tube enters the lax tissue of the stigma, and, by gradual increments of growth, pushes its way down the style into the germen or ovary in which the ovules are found, up to this period, unfertilized. The tube enters one of the unimpregnated ovules through a small hole called the micropyle (from μικξος a little, πυλη gate), conveying the fecundating fluid matter contained in the cavity of the grain into the young ovule. This fluid matter is called fovilla, and its flow through the pollen tube is easily perceived by the movement of those microscopic corpuscles which it contains. [Illustration: Fig. 2.] Fig. 2 is a section through the stigma, and part of the style of Antirrhinum majus, or the common snapdragon. The pollen grains are seen adhering to the surface of the stigma, and the tube is pushing its way down the pistil to the germen. The ovules having received the impregnating matter, the flower loses its beauty, and nothing remains but the germen, which swells into a fruit abounding with seeds, by which the species is continued. An attentive observer may watch these changes throughout the summer months in any plant that produces flowers and fruit, and may thus satisfy himself of the general correctness of these statements. AUNT TABITHA'S FIRESIDE. No. IX.--THE MISERY CAUSED BY USING THE WRONG PUDDING-DISH. BY EDITH WOODLEY "I believe, Lizzy, that I never told you my own experience about goin' out to sarvice. I didn't go out 'cause 'twas necessary that I should, for at my father's there was a house full of everything. We al'ays lived like the sweet cheeses, as the sayin' is.