[Illustration: FIG. 173] [Illustration: FIG. 174] Next we see all the stamens from one of the tiny flowers of the golden-rod (Fig. 174). These are very much larger than life. There are five of them, fastened together in a sort of tube. Split open this tube and flatten it out. Now they look like five little sisters, arm in arm (Fig. 175). And here, again joined in a tube, we see the stamens of the mallow (Fig. 176). From the hollow of this tube stand out the tops of the mallow’s pistils. Some flowers have so many stamens that you would find it almost impossible to count them. This little blossom (Fig. 177), the enchanter’s nightshade (drawn much larger than life), has only two. [Illustration: FIG. 175] [Illustration: FIG. 176] [Illustration: FIG. 177] I hope that you children, from now on, will be unwilling to pass by a flower without looking to see whether its stamens are few or many; and I hope you will try to carry away in your minds a clear idea of the size and shape of their dust boxes. [Illustration: Pollen] FLOWER DUST, OR POLLEN When a child smells a flower, he is apt to put his nose right into the middle of the blossom, and to take it out with a dab of yellow dust upon its tip. When he brushes off this dust, of course he does not stop to think that each tiny grain holds a speck of the wonderful material we read about some time ago, the material without which there can be no life. And probably he does not know that the dust grains from the lily are quite unlike those which he rubs upon his nose when he smells a daisy; that different kinds of flowers yield different kinds of flower dust. If you should look through a microscope at a grain of flower dust from the lily, you would see an object resembling Fig. 178. [Illustration: FIG. 178] [Illustration: FIG. 179] [Illustration: FIG. 180] [Illustration: FIG. 181] [Illustration: FIG. 182] Fig. 179 shows a grain from the pretty blue flower of the chicory. Fig. 180 is a dust grain from the flower of the pine tree. Fig. 181 is from the laurel, and the odd-looking Fig. 182 is from a dust box of the evening primrose. [Illustration: FIG. 183] The next picture (Fig. 183) shows you a group of dust grains from flowers of different kinds, one looking like a porcupine, another like a sea shell, another like some strange water animal, and all, I fancy, quite unlike any idea you may have had as to the appearance of a grain of flower dust. When you are older, I hope it may be your good luck to see through a microscope some of the odd shapes and curious markings of different kinds of flower dust, or “pollen,” as this flower dust is called in the books. And now that you know something of the appearance of flower dust, perhaps you wish to learn a little more of the way in which it helps the flower to turn into the fruit. [Illustration: Decoration] ABOUT PISTILS