If we take simply the utilitarian view of flowers, we should say that their purpose is to make seeds and fruits. After the flower falls a seedvessel is left on the stem. In some cases this is barely large enough to hold the seeds-it is simply a seed-holder. But sometimes this is larger than it need to be to hold the seeds-it is then fruit, as well as a seed-holder. Here is the seed-holder of the rose, shaped, as you see, very much like a pear. When the rose first falls it is small, but it grows, and commonly becomes of a reddish color. When you cut it open you find it entirely filled with seeds, as represented here, crowded closely together.

and early next morning you will see them all bees are ever busy gathering their store of honey. opened, presenting the elegant shape shown at But if you look at evening, all this hum and stir the bottom of the opposite page. The texture of of the insect world is stilled-they have gone to the flower is exceedingly thin and delicate. It their rest for the night, and you see but here is on account of this that the strong ribs, which and there one of the smaller ones, sheltered in you see, run up from the bottom of the flower- some flower upon a bed more soft and beautiful cup, and come to a point at its edge. They than royal wealth ever secured to its possessor. are the frame-work that keeps it in shape. If you look at the same flower in the afternoon you will find it closing up in the manner represented in this figure. You see that the spiral arrangement that it had when folded as a bud is not observed now. The points of the ribs bend directly over into the middle of the flower. The cypress vine, like the morningglory, has a fresh set of blossoms every day. Very beautiful are its brilliant red tiny flowers in the morning, new-born with the rising sun, as they peep out from among the delicate leaves. But before the sun is set they are all wilted. A few short hours have sufficed for them to fulfill their mission of beauty. It is curious to see how the bumble-bee manages to get at the honey in these flowers. They have a deep and slender tube, at the bottom of which is the honey; and as the bee can not go into this, he works away at it until he slits it open.

In contrast with this is represented a small pear cut open so as to show how small a space in this seed-holder the seeds occupy. All the juicy substance which makes up its bulk is not needed to preserve the

Did you ever observe, as you have walked in your garden, how busy the insect world is among the flowers? Besides the "busy little bee," and his lumbering noisy cousin, the bumble-bee, and the sportive butterfly, there are multitudes of flies and bugs, great and small, many of them of brilliant color, and some of the smallest of exceeding delicacy and beauty. A Frenchman in Paris, St. Pierre, watched a strawberry plant in a pot in his window, and counted in three weeks thirty-seven different species of insects that visited it. "They were all," he says, "dis-seeds-it is designed for antinguishable from each other by their colors, other purpose. And the their forms, and their motions; some of them same distinction can be shone like gold, others were of the colors of drawn in regard to the seedsilver and brass; some were spotted, some holders of other plants. Most striped; they were blue, green, brown, and seeds are enveloped in the chestnut-colored. The heads of some were fruit part of the seed-holder. It is otherwise, rounded like a turban; those of others were however, with that small drawn out in the figure of a cone; here it was but elegant fruit, the strawdark as a tuft of black velvet, there it sparkled berry-here the seeds are like a ruby. There was not less diversity in set in upon the outside, their wings; in some they were long and brill-giving beauty to the fruit iant, like transparent plates of mother-of-pearl; by their contrast with its in others short and broad, resembling net-work bright-red surface. bit mo of the finest gauze."

As you watch the insects about flowers at mid-day it is a busy scene. Some are crawling about; others seem to be resting for the time, perhaps feasting their little eyes on the beauties around them; others are flying about from one flower to another, or hovering over them, humming their quiet song of pleasure; and the

The formation of seeds and fruits is the finishing of a process of which the flowering is the beginning. The same material is used

throughout-the seeds and the fruits are made from the same sap with the flowers. Few think how wonderful this is. But look at it for a mo

ment. Here is a pure white orange blossom as readily as seeds that have been kept only with its rich perfume. It is constructed from from the previous year. the sap that comes up in the green stem. The blossom falls, and a little green ball is left, made out of this same sap; and by the flow of this fluid to it this green ball becomes larger and larger, and at length changes its color to a bright yellow or orange. What a series of changes in these successive elaborations from that simple and almost characterless fluid, the sap! And then look at the ripe fruit itself, the consummation of these elaborations, and observe what different products from this sap are contained in it. You have the sweet juice inclosed in the cells of the divisions, like so many sealed bottles ready for use; the white and tasteless substance of which these cells and divisions are made; the seeds; and then the skin with its pungent and often bitter oil-all very different, and yet made from the same material.

Seeds and fruits could have been made without being preceded by any thing so beautiful as flowers. This beginning of the series of processes might have been such as not to awaken admiration or gratify taste. It might have been simple, even homely; and yet the object of the processes might have been accomplished just as well as now. But the Creator chose to usher in the fruits with which He blesses us with even a profuse display of beauty-He has done more than this, in giving us many flowers where no fruit follows, thereby showing that beauty is not always the mere attendant upon use, but an end sometimes to be aimed at by itself.

While fruits are especially for use, as flowers are for beauty, in many fruits the two objects are combined. Clusters of grapes, hanging by their slender stems, the bright yellow oranges among the green leaves, and richly-colored peaches, are familiar examples. Sometimes, though not often, the fruit itself is more beautiful than the flower, as in the case of the strawberry.

When a seed germinates, there is a stalk and a root, the stalk always going up to seek the air, and the root going down to fasten itself in the ground, no matter what the position of the seed may be. Here is a representation of a seed burst open, and letting these two parts go, each in its destined direction. Why it is that this sort of instinct thus governs the movements of the root and the stalk, we know not. The root sometimes

shows its propensity to seek the ground in an extraordinary manner. In Galloway, in Scotland, a seed of the plane-tree was observed to take root on an old wall, about ten feet from the ground. The young tree grew well for a while, sending its roots into the earth which was between the stones. But after a while it began to languish, because this small quantity of earth was not sufficient to maintain a tree of the size to which this had reached. It shortly, however, revived again by sending down roots the whole ten feet into the ground at the foot of the wall. It would have become a large tree had it not been blown down by a heavy wind, which was readily done because it was so stilted up upon its long roots.

Various are the ways in which seeds are scattered. The wind, however, is the principal agent, and some seeds have special contrivances to enable it to blow them about. Here, The germination of seeds is an interesting for example, are seeds process. A dry seed does not look as if much of the maple, with their I would ever come out of it. But there is a thin wing-like appendwonder-working power locked up in that seed. ages, by means of which There is life there; but it is asleep. There is they go whirling in the wind, instead of dropping the germ there of a large growth. There need always just under the tree. And here you to be applied certain stimulants, heat and moist- have one of the seeds of the danure, and this life wakes up and bursts its prison-delion. Its long and slender house, and the germ unfolds more and more, till stem, ending in numerous fine the plant, with all its appurtenances, is evolved. | fibres, is an apparatus fitting it to From a single kernel of corn comes up the tall be a great traveler, as it often is, stalk, with its broad, long leaves, and at length upon the wings of the wind. The appear the golden ears; there being nothing in symmetrical feathery globe, which all this growth like to the little kernel put into the seeds of the dandelion form the ground except the kernels in those ears. upon its stalk, is one of the most So too, from the acorn trodden into the ground exquisitely delicate structures to comes the mighty oak; and the life imprisoned be found in the vegetable kingdom; and yet, bein the little brown seed of an apple, called out cause it is so common an object, it is seldom by warmth and moisture, produces a tree load- admired. As we see the child making a toy of ed year after year with fruit. it, and blowing upon it, to see its feathered seeds fly off in the air, we do not think of it as one of the wonderful things of God's handiwork. In looking at this globular arrangement, we must observe that the rays do not

Sometimes life in the seed has a long undisturbed sleep, even for centuries. Seeds buried in Herculaneum and Pompeii have been recently taken out, and have been found to germinate

eties: the first, ternate, or three leaved, of which | They are little capsules, which, when opened to the clover is an example; and the second, biter- discharge their seeds, are cup-like depressions, as here represented.