The double seed-leaf plants include all the highest and most specialized varieties. Bark, stem, pith, and concentric rings of growth are clearly defined; the leaves are netted-veined, and the petals grouped in fours or fives or multiples of these numbers. The lowest class, represented by the catkin-bearers, as the birch and alder, the poplar and the oak, and by plants allied to the nettle and to the laurel, are nearly related to the highest gymnosperms. Next in order are the crown-bearers, or flowers with corollas, as the rose family, which includes most of our fruit yielders, from strawberries to apples; while the highest and most perfect of all are plants in which the petals are united together in bell-shape or funnel fashion. Such are the convolvulus and honeysuckle, the olive and ash, and at the top of the plant-scale, the family of which the daisy is the most familiar representative. Its position among plants corresponds to man’s position among animals. As he, in virtue of being the most complex and highly specialized, is at their head, albeit many exceed him in bulk and strength, so is the daisy with its allies, for like reasons, above the giants of the forest. The primary function for which the organs of plants known as flowers exists is not that which man has long assumed. He once thought that the earth was the centre of the universe until astronomy dispelled the illusion, and there yet lingers in him an old _Adam_ of conceit that everything on the earth has for its sole end and aim his advantage and service. Evolution will dispel that illusion. But our delight in the colors and perfumes of flowers will not be lessened, while wonder will have larger field for play in learning that the colored leaves known as flowers, together with their scent and honey, have been developed in furtherance of nature’s supreme aim--the preservation and increase of the species. And truly the contrivances to secure this which are manifest in plant-life are astounding even to those who perceive most clearly the unity of function which connects the highest and lowest life-forms together. It is difficult, nay, wellnigh impossible, to deny the existence of a rudimentary consciousness in the efforts of certain plants to secure fertilization. Take, for example, the well-known aquatic plant, _Vallisneria spiralis_. When the male flowers detach themselves and float about the water, the female flowers develop long spiral stalks by which to reach them, and become fertilized by the discharge of pollen on their pistils. Most flowers have their male and female organs within the same petals, and in some cases fertilize themselves by scattering the pollen from the bursting stamens on the stigma or head of the pistil. But nature is opposed to this; “tells us in the most emphatic manner that she abhors perpetual self-fertilization,” with its resultant puny and feeble offspring; and we find a number of contrivances to prevent this, and to secure fertilization by the