CHAPTER VI. As autumn approached, Charney could not forbear expressing to his friend, as they sat together on the Bench of Conference, his regret at losing all hopes of Picciola’s second flowering, and his lamentations over her last blossom. Girardi immediately attempted to supply the loss by a dissertation on the fructification of plants, and the evidence thereby afforded of the intervention of an all-wise Providence. Girardi first alluded to the winged form of the seeds of certain plants, whose foliage, large and complicated, would oppose their dispersion, but for the feathery tuft attached to each, which causes them to float in the atmosphere; and described the elastic pods in which others are enclosed, which, opening by a sudden spring, at the moment of maturity, discharge the seed to a distance. “These wings, these springs,” observed the old man, “are hands and feet bestowed upon them by the Almighty, that they may reach their destined place, and germinate in the sunshine. What human eye, for instance,” said he, “is able to follow, in their aërial flight, the membranous seeds of the elm, the maple, the pine, the ash—circling in the atmosphere amid volumes of other seeds, rising by their own buoyancy, and apparently flying in search of the birds, of which they are to form the nourishment?” The old man next proceeded to explain the phenomena of aquatic plants; how the seeds of those destined for the adornment of brooks, or the banks of lakes or ponds, are endowed with a form enabling them to float upon the water, so as to deposit themselves in various parts of the beach, or cross from one bank to another; while such as are intended to take root in the bed of the river fall at once by their own weight to the bottom, and give birth to reeds and rushes, or those beautiful water-lilies, whose roots are in the mud beneath, while their large green shining leaves, and snow-white blossoms, float in pride and glory upon the bosom of the waters. The vallisneria was not forgotten; the male and female plants of which being disunited, the latter uncoils her long spiral peduncle, to raise her flower above the surface of the stream, while the male, unpossessed of a similar faculty, breaks its fragile flower-stalk, and rises spontaneously to the surface, to accomplish the act of fecundation. “How is it,” cried Charney, “that men remain insensible to the existence of these wondrous prodigies of nature?” And the old man rejoiced at the exclamation, as a proof that his lessons were not shed upon a barren and ungrateful soil. “Tell me,” demanded the Count, “has the insect creation, to which your studies have been peculiarly addressed, furnished you with facts as curious as those for which I am indebted to my Picciola?”