As the flowers grow older and seem to fade a little, cut off one more to look at. Now you see the seed-pod growing at the bottom of the pistil. The pistil is made of three parts; the seed-bag, the stem or post, and a little cushion at the top. Now your pretty bean-flower has faded, and fallen away, dead. But what is this where the flower was? A little sharp, green thing is here! Why, it is a tiny bean-pod! Every day it grows larger. You can see the little beans through the skin of the pod. By and by the pod has its full growth. It is brown and hard and dry. It will crack open easily. It cracks all around into two halves. Here are the beans fastened to the sides of the pod, by little thread-like stems. Just such beans as you planted in the spring! All the spring and the summer your bean-plant grew. Now it is done growing. The cold autumn has come. The seed is ripe. But what is the matter with your bean-plant? It is turning hard and brown and dry. It is dead. It will do no good to water it. Its roots drink no more; they are dead. It was made to grow only from spring to fall. From seed to seed, that is its story; that is what it was made for. Here, folded up in these hard dry beans lie the bean-vines of next year. These new beans will have, if you plant them, such a life-story as this that we have been reading. LESSON V. THE GROWTH OF PLANTS. How do plants grow? That is a very great question, but we will try to find a little part of the answer. You know when you look at a flower, as a lily, you find in the middle of it some tall, slender parts which you are told are stamens and a pistil. The pistil usually stands right in the centre of the flower. It seems to be the most precious part, and all the other parts take care of it. [Illustration: IN SUN AND DEW.] I knew a boy who told his sister that “they said at school that plants had little guns.” He thought the word pistil meant something to shoot with! But if there is any shooting done by plants, it is done by the stamens, and not by the pistil. On the top of the stamen is a little box, to hold the pollen, or flower-dust. You read of that some time ago in the lesson about bees and ants, in your other Nature Readers. When the pollen is of full size, or ripe, the little box bursts open, and out the pollen flies. The growth of the plant begins here, with the pollen. A tiny grain of pollen, falling on the top of the pistil, begins to grow. It puts out little threads like roots. These grow down the stem, or post, of the pistil into the seed case. There they find the seed germs, and when the pollen comes to them, the germs begin to grow. They grow very fast. It is then that the pretty flowers fade. The work of the blossom is done when the pollen is ripe, and the seed germs begin to grow.