In the tropics vegetation is generally of a fresher verdure, more luxuriant and succulent, and adorned with larger and more shining leaves than in our northern climates. The “social” plants, which often impart so uniform and monotonous a character to European countries, are almost entirely absent in the equatorial regions. Trees almost as lofty as our oaks are adorned with flowers as large and as beautiful as our lilies. On the shady banks of the Rio Magdalena in South America, there grows a climbing Aristolochia bearing flowers four feet in circumference which the Indian boys draw over their heads in sport, and wear as hats or helmets. In the islands of the Indian Archipelago the flower of the Rafflesia is nearly three feet in diameter, and weighs above fourteen pounds. THE GENESIS OF FLOWERS --ALEXANDER S. WILSON The flowers most generally known are brightly colored flowers adapted for insect fertilization; only these require to attract insects, which is the end served by the perfume and conspicuous coloring. Very many plants, however, bear blossoms so small and obscurely colored that they are either entirely overlooked or not reckoned as flowers at all. The wind-fertilized flowers of the dock and nettle have no occasion for the services of insects, and are destitute of honey, odor, and brilliant petals. Still more insignificant in appearance are the little self-fertilizing cleistogamic flowers, which, toward the end of the season, are produced on the dog-violet. All three kinds possess stamens and pistils, and are therefore recognized as flowers by botanists. Besides stamens and pistils, which are the essential organs of a flower, petals and sepals are usually present. The petals collectively compose the corolla, the sepals the calyx; both together being spoken of as the floral envelopes or perianth. Occasionally, as in the ash, the flower is reduced to its essential organs, the floral envelopes being absent. Plants bearing flowers, whether with or without floral envelopes, are designated phanerogams or flowering plants; they constitute the highest division of the vegetable kingdom. Ferns and mosses, again, are examples of the cryptogamic or flowerless class; they never bear flowers or seeds, but are propagated by minute reproductive bodies termed spores. This class is divided into thallophytes and vascular cryptogams. The organization of a thallophyte is very simple; the plant body of a fungus or sea-weed, for example, consists entirely of similar cells, and externally shows no distinction into root, stem, and leaf. The structure of a vascular cryptogam, such as a club-moss, horsetail, or fern, is more complicated; both cells and vessels enter into the composition of its tissues, and externally the distinction of stem and leaf is apparent. Phanerogams also admit of a twofold division into gymnosperms and angiosperms; conifers, cycads, and yews are gymnospermous, having naked seeds, exposed either on the ends of