But first you must know a little something about the pistil, if I am really to make clear to you how the flower dust helps the flower to change into fruit. This picture (Fig. 184) shows you the pistil of the lily. At the foot of this pistil, you remember, is the box which holds the lily’s seeds. [Illustration: FIG. 184] The top of the lily’s pistil is quite large and somewhat flat. It is almost as sticky as if it had received a dab of glue. This flat top dwindles below into a stalk, which grows larger again at its lower end. Now take a sharp knife and cut open lengthwise this pistil. The lower, thicker part, seen through a magnifying glass, looks like Fig. 185. You see a great many baby seeds fastened to a central wall. Each one of these seeds holds a speck of the wonderful material without which there is no life. But this speck of life has not the power to make the seed grow into a plant. To do this, the seed must have some outside help; and this help can come only from a grain of flower dust. [Illustration: FIG. 185] Perhaps you wonder how a dust grain brushed on the pistil’s flat top can ever reach the baby seeds hidden away in the seedbox. I could not tell you to-day how this is done were it not for those wise and patient men and women who have spent days and weeks and months, and even years, in watching and studying the ways of plants. But first let me ask you a question. What happens when a healthy seed falls on moist ground? Why, it seems to take in the moisture, and to thrive upon it. It swells up, and at last it bursts open, and it sends a root down into the earth. Now, something not altogether unlike this happens when a lily dust grain falls upon the moist tip of a lily pistil. The dust grain sucks in the moisture. It grows bigger and bigger. The outer skin becomes too small for the swelling contents. At last it bursts open, letting out a little tube. This little tube works its way down through the stalk of the pistil, almost as a root pushes down into the earth, and at last it reaches one of the seeds in the seedbox below. And into this tiny seed the little tube pushes its way. The tube has carried with it that speck of wonderful living material which every dust grain holds. And when this living speck has been added to that which the seed already holds, a great change begins to come about. This new touch of life, added to that already present, gives the lily seed the power to grow into a lily plant. The other dust grains that were brushed upon the flat top of the lily’s pistil act in just the same way. Apparently without difficulty the different tubes find their way to the different seeds, till at last each one has received the fresh touch of life without which it cannot grow into a lily plant. [Illustration: FIG. 186]