Claire gave her uncle a needle at his request; then with the delicate patience necessary for this operation he isolated one of the numerous flowers of which the whole forms the ear of wheat. The delicate little flower displayed clearly, on the point of the needle, the different parts composing it. [Illustration: Wheat] “The blessed plant that gives us bread has not time to think of its toilet. It has such weighty things to attend to: it must feed the world! So you see what quiet clothes it wears! Two poor scales serve it for calyx and corolla. You can easily recognize three hanging stamens with their double sachets for anthers. The principal body of the flower is the tun-bellied ovary, which, when ripe, will be a grain of wheat. It is surmounted by the stigma, fashioned like a double plume of exquisite delicacy. Salute it, my children: behold the modest little flower that gives life to us all!” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER LXI POLLEN “IN a few days, even in a few hours, a flower withers. Pistils, stamens, calyx, fade and die. Only one thing survives: the ovary, which will become fruit. “Now, in order to outlive the other parts of the flower and remain on its stem when all the rest dries up and falls, the ovary, at the moment when blossoming is at its greatest vigor, receives a supplement of strength, I should almost say a new life. The magnificence of the corolla, its sumptuous colorings, its perfumes, serve to celebrate the solemn moment when this new vitality comes to the ovary. This great act accomplished, the flower has had its day. [Illustration: Grains of Pollen] “Well, it is the pollen, the yellow dust of the stamens, that gives this increase of energy without which the nascent seeds would perish in the ovary, itself withered. It falls from the stamens on to the stigma, always coated with a stickiness apt to hold it; and from the stigma, it makes its mysterious action felt in the depths of the ovary. Animated with new life, the nascent seeds develop rapidly, while the ovary swells so as to give them necessary room. The final result of this incomprehensible travail is the fruit, with its contents of seeds ready to germinate and produce new plants. Do not question me further about these wonderful things concerning which even the keenest observer ceases to see clearly. God only, the wisest of beings, knows how a grain of pollen can give birth to something that was not before, and can cause the ovary to feel the stirring of the vital principle. “I will tell you now how we know that the falling of the pollen on to the stigma is indispensable to the development of the ovary into fruit.