Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

When at last the pollen is gone and the anthers are empty and shriveled, the spur is still full of honey.

In front of it has risen, not a stamen this time, but a dainty five-rayed stigma. It is held in place by the style, and is ripe and ready for pollen. It has unfolded its five rays that it may catch and hold the pollen grains.

But all its pollen is gone! The bees and the birds have carried it away. The bees ate some and carried some home to their hives. None remains for the five-rayed stigma. But here comes a bee, a large, yellow-banded bumblebee. She has a ball of red pollen in each of her two baskets. She gathered it in another tropæolum blossom, and intends to take it home to feed the young bees; but as she enters our pollenless flower for nectar, lo! she brushes aside the five-rayed stigma. A few grains of pollen from her legs cling to the stigma, for it is sticky and holds them.

The bee hurries away. She does not know what she has done; she does not know that in brushing aside the stigma that stood in her way she has given life to the seeds and provided for a new generation of tropæolum vines.

The flower gave pollen to its neighbors, and now in its need they have sent pollen to it.

Soon the bright corolla fades and falls. Its work is done. It expressed its joy in life; it called the bees, and by them sent pollen to its neighbors, and took pollen from them in return.

For many days it kept its long red horn full of sweet nectar, until its stigma rose and took the pollen, when the flower faded and fell. But the five-rayed stigma did not fall. It remained attached to the green little fruit that lay hid in the heart of the flower.

It is not easy to see this fruit when the flower first opens, for it is small and hidden by the stamens.

But after the pollen has reached the stigma the fruit grows rapidly. The corolla falls, and the stem that holds the fruit curls up. It curls up until it has drawn the green fruit down under the leaves, out of the way of the buds that wish to open. The stigma and style fall off at last, and leave the fruit to ripen alone.

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WHO LIES CURLED UP?

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Who lies curled up under the shields?
Under the shields of its parents?
A cunning young fruit peeps out o’er the world,
From under the shields of its parents.

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It is parted in three with a seed in each part,
This cunning young fruit I’ve told you about.
It is parted in three, yet the three are one fruit,
Lying under the shields of the parents.

The stems curl up and pull it down
Under the shields of its parents.
It lies there all safe, so near the warm ground,
Under the shields of its parents!

MORE ABOUT THE TROPÆOLUM.

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The tropæolum, which people call nasturtium, has shields to defend itself.

Warriors are content with one shield, but the tropæolum has many.

They have only to protect themselves from the darts of the enemy, but the tropæolum has a harder task: it has to protect itself against the pangs of hunger.

It needs many shields to do this, for hunger is a tireless foe, and has his quiver always full of arrows.

You see, in the tropæolum the shields are the leaves, and they are held out on long stems to catch the darts Apollo, the sun, flings at them. These are not unfriendly darts, but as they strike the little shields of the tropæolum they make them tingle with life. Then the shield leaves go to work and make food for the plant. They make starch and many other things. They make a spicy juice, for one thing, that causes our tongues to smart if we taste it. Sometimes we bite a tropæolum stem, for we like the taste of the sharp juice. But we do not want too much of it, for it makes the palate at the back of the nose tingle, and that is why we call it “nasturtium.” “Nasturtium,” you know, comes from two Latin words, _nasus tortus_, which mean “convulsed nose”; and nobody likes to have a “convulsed nose” very long at a time!

“Nasturtium” is not the right name for our plant with its many shields.

There is another plant which “convulses” our noses, and which the botany tells us is the nasturtium, but which we call _water cress_. We eat it in the spring of the year.

The right name of our garden nasturtium is “tropæolum,” which comes from a Greek word meaning “trophy,” its many shields probably being likened to so many trophies taken from the enemy.

Another name for it is “Indian cress,” and, like the water cress, it sometimes is eaten, only in this case it is the flowers instead of the leaves that find themselves converted into a salad. The fruits, too, share a similar fate. Like the rest of the plant, they are filled with spicy juice. This is a misfortune to them, since it tempts people to take these juicy, spicy fruits and pickle them to eat.

Perhaps the plant learned to store up this stinging, spicy juice to protect itself from being eaten by animals. But what can it do to protect itself from the pickle jar?

Perhaps, however, the stinging juice was but a result of the plant’s peculiar method of growth. Of course juice must have some sort of taste, and why not a stinging taste as well as any other?

This plant prepares another liquid which is not sharp and stinging, but sweet and spicy; with this delicious nectar it fills its long spur and keeps it full.

The bees collect it and convert it into tropæolum honey to fill their waxen cells.

This the plant does not object to. It makes the nectar for the bees, and when, they take it away and store it up for winter use the tropæolum suffers no loss. But when some one comes along and picks the fruits and stores _them_ up for winter use, that is another matter!

We are tempted to call the spur of the tropæolum its “horn of plenty,” for that is the name of the horn overflowing with good things that never is empty.

The Goddess of Plenty owns this horn. You can see it in her pictures, as it always stands at her side, and there overflows with flowers and fruits. All that is good that grows in the earth is in the horn of the Goddess of Plenty. It is her cornucopia, for “cornucopia,” you know, means “horn of plenty.”

The goddess got her horn from the Naiads. They, you know, are the nymphs of the brooks and fountains, and they gave it to her.

This is the story of how she got it.

The river god, Acheloüs, and Hercules, the god of strength, struggled together. Hercules threw the god Acheloüs and seized him by the throat. Then Acheloüs, in order to escape, changed himself into a serpent.

This did not help him, for Hercules seized him by the neck and would have choked him, but Acheloüs again changed his shape.

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He became a bull, but this was not enough to defend him from the great strength of Hercules, who seized him by the neck and dragged him to the ground, and in the struggle rent one of his horns from his head.

The nymphs of the brooks and the fountains, who were related to the river god, Acheloüs, consecrated the horn and gave it to the Goddess of Plenty.

That is one story, but some say the following is the history of cornucopia.

You know Saturn, the oldest of the gods, had a bad habit of swallowing his children. When Jupiter was born, his mother, Rhea, did not wish his father, Saturn, to swallow him; so she gave him to the care of the daughters of the king of Crete. They fed him on milk from the goat Amalthea, and watched over him and protected him so that his father should not find him. The people of Crete danced about him and made such a noise when he cried that his father could not hear him.

He must have cried very loud indeed to make all that necessary; but then, he was destined to become a very great god, so no doubt he _did_ make more noise than ordinary babies.

Out of gratitude to his kind nurses, and also as a token of esteem to the good Amalthea, Jupiter broke off one of her horns and endowed it with a very wonderful power. It became filled at once with whatever its possessor might wish!

This was a horn of plenty indeed!

Now you know both stories, and you may take your choice as to which one you will believe. Whether our tropæolum had either of these in mind, it certainly made a very dainty cornucopia when it constructed its honey-horn and filled it for the bees, the butterflies, and the humming birds.

The tropæolums we have in our gardens are not the only kinds; there are, in fact, some forty different tropolæums living in South America and Mexico, and in Peru there is one which has large tuberous roots filled with plant food, which is also good food for man, and is eaten in some parts of South America instead of potatoes!

How would you like to dig your potatoes out of the nasturtium bed?

It certainly would be a pretty place to work on a summer day, and how fine the fields would look all covered with gay tropæolum blooms instead of plain green potato tops with their dull blue flowers!

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JEWELWEED STORIES.

A DAINTY CAVE.

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Touch-me-not has a dainty cave
Spotted with red and poised in the air.
Touch-me-not is a pretty knave
With ruby spots and yellow cave,
Swinging there
So fresh and fair.

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TOUCH-ME-NOT.

Touch-me-not lives in moist places. Her feet stand in the damp earth and her head looks up above the bushes. Other plants love the damp, rich soil along the brookside, and Touch-me-not is sometimes crowded for room.

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She is a tender little plant, this Touch-me-not, and yet she is brave and wise. She knows that if she is to live she must have strong seeds, and that to produce strong seeds she must be strong herself and beautiful.

She finds it easy to be beautiful in the pleasant world, where the sun shines upon her and the breezes fan her.

So forth from the axil of every leaf she swings out her dainty buds. They open their petals at last, all yellow and spotted with red. Cunning caves for the bee, they swing on slender stems. The tangle of weeds by the brookside is dotted all over by the bright blossoms. Light as they are, their slender stems bend under their weight.

The bees see them from a distance; they are attracted by the bright colors and fly to visit the touch-me-nots. They search for honey, and of course they find it, for the touch-me-not has wisely provided nectar for bees and birds.

The pretty yellow flowers contain rich honey in the little spur at the back. The end of the spur turns down, and it is in this turned-down tip the honey is made. From there it runs into the upper part of the spur, where the bees can reach it.

The moist roadside in many places is dotted with yellow touch-me-not flowers. They hang like earrings from their stems, and many call the plant “jewelweed” because of them. It is a pretty sight in the morning to see the bright jewels sparkling in the dew.

“Rubythroat” flashes about among them. “Rubythroat” is our northern humming bird. His throat is ruby red and sparkles in the sun. The rest of his body is green and brown. He shines like a jewel in the sunlight and darts from flower to flower. You cannot watch him, he flies so fast. But when he wishes a sip of honey he poises on his tiny wings before the jewelweed.

Into the dainty swinging flower he darts his slim black bill. He is partial to the honey of the touch-me-not, and wherever it grows in abundance you will be sure to see the rubythroats darting about.

Rubythroat does the flower a favor in return for the honey he gets.

You know about that. He carries pollen to it from some other flower. This new pollen enables strong seeds to form. The jewelweed is very careful to have strong seeds. It covers the pistil with a hood of its own anthers. Behind the anthers in a dark little room the pistil waits until all the pollen is gone and the anthers have fallen off.

The flower does not wish its pistil to receive its own pollen. The earth is crowded, and the seeds must be strong to grow. So the pistil is hidden behind the screen of the anthers until there is no more pollen left; then it comes forth and waits for the birds or the bees to bring it fresh pollen.

The anthers and pistil are not on the floor of the touch-me-not flower, as they are in the nasturtium. They hang from the roof like tiny chandeliers.

The bees do not walk over them, but touch them with their heads or backs, and the humming bird touches them with the top of its bill or with the feathers on its face.

When the birds or the bees have brought the pollen, the yellow corolla falls off and the fruit grows fast.

It is a smooth and delicate fruit, and it may be you know what it does to help the seeds find room.

When the fruit is ripe, the outer covering all of a sudden splits and curls up with considerable force, acting like a spring and shooting the seeds far over the thicket.

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It spreads them far and wide, so they have a better chance to find a place to take root when the time comes.

The fruits are so eager to send the seeds on their journey, and so fearful that some harm will come to them, that they snap them away if any one touches the pods. If you jostle these eager plants you will hear the seeds flying in all directions. If you touch a seed-pod it goes off in your fingers. No wonder we call the plants “touch-me-nots”! Some call them “snapweed” or “snappers,” and the botany calls them “impatiens,” because they are so impatient!

They have yet another name, “lady’s eardrop,” and I do not know how many more. People must like the pretty things to give them so many names.

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EARDROPS.

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Eardrops of gold with red rubies beset,
Hang from the ears of a dear little maid.
“Where did you get them, my darling, my pet?”
“Down by the brook you can pick them,” she said.

LADY’S SLIPPER.

In the garden grows a relative of our jewelweed. It is called the “garden balsam,” and sometimes “lady’s slipper.”

Its own home is far-off India.

Its flowers are larger than those of the jewelweed and are not yellow, but white or red or pink, and sometimes pink and white spotted. In shape, however, it is very like the jewelweed; it hides its pistil beneath the anthers in the same way and snaps its seeds afar.

Its flowers grow double and close to the stalk, and it makes a fine show in the garden in the fall of the year.

There is one thing I should like very much to know, and that is, just when and how this Indian balsam and its cousin the North American jewelweed got separated.

Way, way back, farther back than the building of the pyramids, these two plants must have had the same ancestors. Now, where did those ancestors live? In India? In America? Somewhere between? And what caused them finally to get so widely separated?

Who is going to tell us?

For over two hundred and fifty years the Indian balsam has been cultivated as a garden plant, and no doubt this long cultivation has done much to bring about changes. Still, its resemblance to the jewelweed is quite unmistakable, and we cannot doubt the relationship of the two.

THE HUMMING BIRD.

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Flashing in the sunshine,
Dashing through the air,
Sparkling like a jewel,
See him everywhere!
Poised before a flower
For a moment’s space,
Off again like lightning
On some headlong chase!

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Blossoms all set swinging
On each slender stem.
Touch-me-nots are happy
When he visits them,
For he shakes the pollen
From his shining crest.
Rubythroat is joyous,
Touch-me-not is blest!

PELARGONIUM STORIES.

THE PELARGONIUMS.

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A pelargonium is a “stork’s bill.” “Pelargonium” comes from a Greek word meaning “stork,” and the plant is so named because of the long, beaklike seed-pods. We call the pelargoniums “geraniums,” and raise them in our houses. “Geranium” means almost the same as “pelargonium,” for a geranium is a “crane’s bill,” “geranium” coming from a Greek word meaning “crane,” and the plant is so called because of the shape of the seed-pods.

I do not think there is much difference between a crane’s bill and a stork’s bill, and these two plants with their seed-pods so very much alike were, no doubt, named “stork’s bill” and “crane’s bill” to distinguish them from each other. But we have succeeded in hopelessly mixing them up, for everybody insists upon calling the pelargonium “geranium,” and the geraniums which grow wild in our woods and fields we call “crane’s bill” and “herb Robert.”

The pelargoniums are mostly Africans. There are a great many kinds of them, and all but ten or twelve live in South Africa among the Bushmen, the Boers, and the Englishmen.

The rest have chosen to settle in the northern part of Africa, in the Orient, if you know where that is, and in Australia. Some people believe there are four hundred different pelargoniums, and some say there are less than two hundred. You see, the pelargoniums change easily. Thus a great many varieties are always arising, and it is almost impossible at this late day to discover which was the original form of the plant.

The pelargoniums we know best are the ones we call “horseshoe geraniums,” “Lady Washington geraniums,” and “rose geraniums.”

We are apt to think of the whole Pelargonium Family as being ornamental rather than useful, but in that wonderful South African country where so many of them live, there is actually a pelargonium that produces edible tubers!

The next time you go to Cape Colony you must be sure and eat potatoes gathered from a geranium plant!

Down in Algeria, where the walls are so white and the sun shines so hot, the people express an oil from their geraniums and sell it. Other geraniums also yield this fragrant oil, but nowhere is it so largely used as in sunny Algeria.

Pelargoniums love to grow. You need only break off a twig and stick it in the ground, and it will grow as merrily as though nothing had happened.

One day a double-flowered crimson pelargonium blew away in a gale of wind. It broke off just above the root and away it went. It was rescued, stuck back into the pot of earth, abundantly watered, and continued to open its flowers as though such an escapade were an everyday occurrence!

Now about its beak. The pelargonium has a beak, no doubt, but it does not put it to the same use the stork does, for its beak is made up of the long styles of the pistil which cling fast to a central column. The whole fruit looks a _little_ like a long bird’s beak. This beak _opens_, but not to swallow little fishes as a stork’s beak does.

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It opens to let out a feather! When the seed gets ripe, the case in which it lies at the bottom of the pistil breaks away, and the style curves up and breaks loose from the central support. As soon as the style loosens, out comes the feather. Not a real feather, of course, but a tuft of silvery white hairs that grow along the inside of the style and are packed close as can be until the style lets them out; then they separate and form a wide fringe along the loosened style. Finally, the style is only held by the very tip; then this gives way, and the feather flies away with seed and style. It flies on the wings of the wind, of course, since it has none of its own.

In this way the geranium seeds are sometimes carried long distances. But this is not the end of the story. At last the seed with its coverings and feather rests on the ground. The seed end is towards the ground, and the very tip of the pod is provided with a few short, stiff hairs, that point backwards like the barbs on a fish hook or a bee sting.

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Now what do you suppose these hairs are for? Do you think their being there is a mere accident? Not at all. When the weather is damp, the style, with the feather attached, curls up. Then it acts like a gimlet and forces the pointed end of the seed into the ground. When it becomes dry, the style straightens out. But the seed cannot be pulled out of the ground when this happens, because the barbs on the tip of the seed-case hold it fast! So it does time and again. When it is damp, the seed is forced deeper into the earth. When it is dry, the style straightens out so as to be ready to curl up again.

You see how it is, do you not? The pelargonium is _planting its seed_.

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Certainly the geraniums are good parents. All the members of this astonishing family do something clever for the sake of the seeds.

AN AFRICAN.

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There’s a native of Cape Town
Always wears a scarlet crown.
Not a lord of high degree,
But a simple peasant he.

You will see him, if you look,
Resting in some sunny nook.
He’s no Boer nor Englishman,
But a native African!

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He just wanders up and down
O’er the wilds of hot Cape Town;
Takes no part in strife or war,—
Doesn’t know what it is for.

Boers may fight if they must needs.
Calm he sits among the weeds.
No soldier he in battle’s hum,
But just a red geranium!

PELARGONIUM LEAVES.

Some of the pelargoniums decorate their leaves with horseshoes. All are in the habit of folding their leaves fan-like in the bud. When they grow large these folds straighten out. It is a good thing to be folded up fan-like in the bud; the leaf then takes up less room, and is kept snug and safe until it grows strong enough to care for itself. The pelargonium indulges in large stipules. These are green, leaf-like bodies growing on the leaf stalk where it is attached to the stem of the plant. They fold over the young leaf and protect it; but after the leaf comes out of the motherly arms of the stipules and stands up on a long stem, the work of the stipules is done, and gradually they fade and wither away.

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Most pelargonium leaves are covered with a fine coat of hairs. In the warm countries where pelargoniums grow wild they need a coat of down to prevent the sun from scorching them.

As long as there is plenty of water in the leaves the sun cannot harm them, no matter how warmly it shines; but if it can draw out the water, then the leaf must fade. The coat of hairs for one thing prevents the water from evaporating too rapidly. Thus the pelargonium does not wear its fuzzy coat to protect it from the cold, but from the sun. The hairs also prevent the rain or dew from stopping up the breathing pores of the leaf.

Most pelargonium leaves have a habit of using perfumery of one kind or another. They make it themselves out of the food they find in the earth and the air. The rose geraniums we think are particularly successful in this respect.

Why do you suppose the pelargoniums perfume their leaves?

Perhaps it is to prevent animals from grazing them, for animals do not like to eat strong-scented things, even if to our senses the odor is agreeable. If this _is_ the reason, we are glad the pelargoniums selected a perfume that we can enjoy.

We think there may be some such reason for the fragrance of the pelargonium, because plants are never wasteful. They make only what will be useful to them in some way. They love to be beautiful, but are never satisfied unless theirs is a useful beauty. The fragrance of the leaves, however, may be due to some cause and useful for some purpose that we know not of.

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THE GERANIUM FAMILY.

The Geranium People are rather unsettled as to their relatives—or, rather, _we_ are somewhat confused on the subject. Probably the geraniums know all about it, but they will not tell the botanists, so the botanists have to do the best they can by themselves.

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Some say the tropæolum belongs to the Geranium Family, and it certainly does bear quite a strong family resemblance to the geraniums.

They also say the Impatiens Family is a branch of the geraniums and the pelargoniums, which you know we _always_ call geraniums. The crane’s bills and herb Roberts and all _their_ near relations of course are geraniums, and some say the wood sorrels belong to this distinguished family.

Whether these all belong to one family or not, one thing is certain: they are all agreeable to us, and are not so very numerous even when taken all together. The whole of them do not number half so many as do the branches of the Convolvulus Family.

Like the race of white people, they belong principally to temperate climates.

They do not all belong to _our_ climate, however.

The nasturtiums, for instance, are South Americans and Mexicans. They like to keep warm better than some other members of their family, and their seeds cannot, as a rule, live through our cold winters. But if we gather the seeds and put them away out of the fierce winter cold and plant them in the spring, then the nasturtiums will grow their best and please us with their bright flowers. We cannot help liking them, they are so jolly with their gay flowers and their round leaves with twisting stalks.

We like them, too, because the flower stem curls up and draws the seeds under the leaves out of the way of the young buds that are waiting to bloom.

I do not know whether wild nasturtiums are as large and bright as the cultivated ones. Very likely not, as people have taken great pains to make them large and bright by selecting the seeds of the largest flowers from year to year and giving them good soil in which to grow.

Perhaps the members of the Geranium Family we really know best are the pelargoniums from the Cape of Good Hope. It is about as warm in their African home as it is in our Florida, so of course they cannot live out of doors through our cold Northern winters. But we take them in the house when cold weather comes, and sometimes put them in the cellar.

Of course they do not grow much in the cellar, but they _rest_ there, and when they are taken out in the spring are all ready to wake up and blossom.

The whole Geranium Family seems to take extra care of its seeds.

We know how the nasturtium curls up its stem so as to draw the seeds below the leaves out of the way, giving the buds a chance to come out, and also protecting the seeds.

The pelargoniums do not do that, but they do something much more elaborate for the sake of their seed-children, as we know. They give them a parachute to fly with, for one thing. A parachute, you know, is a contrivance by which bodies can be sustained in the air while falling or blowing along in the wind.

But the parachute is not all,—they give them an auger by which to bore into the ground and plant themselves.

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The North American crane’s bill seeds perform in a very similar way, their flowers and seed-cases being quite like those of the pelargonium.

How do you suppose North American crane’s bills came to be like South African pelargoniums?

This is a matter which needs investigating.

The pelargoniums are not as juicy as the nasturtiums, but they are somewhat juicy, and their juice has a slightly acid taste instead of being pungent, like the nasturtium juice.

Where pelargoniums live out of doors the year round they grow very large and have stems that are quite woody.

Some of them, as we know, are useful to the human race as well as ornamental, supplying food and an oil highly esteemed as a perfume.

The wood sorrels do not look much like the rest of the Geranium Family. But they do resemble it in their habit of caring for their seeds. Out in the fields you will find the small, yellow-flowered sheep sorrel, with its clover-like, sour-tasting leaves. Now hunt for a seed-pod. They are pretty little things that stand up something like Christmas candles. Touch a ripe one and it splits open down each of its five cells and shows you a row of white seeds in each. You think the seeds are not ripe because they are white, and you touch one of them. What has happened? That seed surely exploded! No, there it is—the other side of the table, not white, but dark brown. Queer performance, this. You touch another and another, and at last you get to understand it. Each seed is surrounded by an elastic white covering, and this it is that suddenly curls up, very much as the impatiens pod does, and sends the seed within it flying!

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When night comes the sorrel goes to sleep. Its leaflets droop and shut together as you see in the picture, and the flowers, too, close. The sorrel loves the sunshine, and often does not open on cloudy days.

There are a great many sorrels in the world besides our sheep sorrel; in fact, we are told there are about two hundred and five of them!

We have only three or four out of all that number, and they are not all yellow like the sheep sorrel. One that lives in the cool Northern woods is white, with delicate pink veins. Pretty little things they are, and farther South there lives a pretty violet one.

Like the pelargoniums, the sorrels are to be found at the Cape of Good Hope. In fact, most of the two hundred and five kinds live there and in South America.

Like the pelargoniums, too, the South African sorrels are much larger and brighter than their American relatives.

We like them so well we raise them in our greenhouses and window boxes. They are much larger than our wild sorrels and have bright pink or white or yellow corollas.

Down in Peru, too, there grows a very useful sorrel; they call it “oca,” and raise it for its potatolike tubers which the people eat.

The Mexicans also have a sorrel with edible bulbs and bright red flowers. In fact, the sorrel, like the potato, has a habit of storing up plenty of underground food which is also good food for man, and several species of sorrel are raised for this purpose in different parts of the world.

In those places, instead of a potato field you have a sorrel field.

We often eat the leaves of the wood sorrel for the sake of their pleasant acid taste. The proper name of the sorrel is “oxalis,” and comes from a Greek word meaning “acid.” But if we were to extract this acid from the sorrel and then eat it, we would have a serious time, for in its concentrated form it is a fearful poison. It is sold under the misleading name of “salt of lemons,” and for this reason people often ignorantly taste it, thinking that “salt of lemons” can do them no harm.

This dangerous “salt of lemons” is very useful in calico printing, in dyeing, and in the bleaching of flax and straw.

The next time you come across a patch of sheep sorrel, stop and think of all it and its relatives are able to do for us.

We usually think of the Geranium Family as being merely ornamental; but, as we have seen, some kinds of tropæolum, several kinds of sorrel, and at least one kind of pelargonium yield edible tubers which are eaten in different parts of the world, and the modest little oxalis yields a substance valuable for manufacturing purposes.

Even our commonplace crane’s bill that blooms so abundantly in the woods in early summer has something for us, for from its roots a medicine is obtained.

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Hyacinth Stories

THE HYACINTH.

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Out in the garden there’s something so dear!
Just as dear,
Do you hear?
Something that comes in the spring of the year
Fragrant as roses and fresh as the dew,
Purple and pink and violet too.
Something new,
Darling too.
Guess what it is and I’ll show it to you!

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SIGNS OF SPRING.

Out of doors are signs of spring. The buds on the trees look full, and some are beginning to burst. But there is very little life as yet.

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Only in the hyacinth bed it is different, for there the hyacinths have waked up; their stiff leaves have opened the door of the earth for the blossoms to come out. The flower clusters are nearly ready to bloom, but the buds are still green. The tall stem has lifted them up into the air and sunlight, and, although the air is still cold, they continue to grow.

Soon the green buds undergo a change. The topmost one on each flower cluster softens to a tender blue or pink.

The green buds grow lovely as they stand on their stems in the sun. Delicate tints steal over them, the green color fades away, and many colors take its place.

They open into charming flowers and give forth a delightful fragrance. The whole garden is sweet with the odor of hyacinths, and we feel that the beautiful summer has sent us a messenger.

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THE HYACINTH’S SCEPTRE.

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Kings bear a sceptre, and so do I.
Theirs is a symbol of power, and so is mine.
Theirs is a costly rod with an emblem at the top
Mine is a tall green rod bearing flower bells.
My sceptre is called a “scape.”
“Scape” means “sceptre,” the sign of kings.

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TUNICS.

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A tunic, as everybody knows, is a dress worn by the old Romans. The Greeks wore a garment very much like that of the Romans, and it, too, is often called a tunic.

Tunics did very well in a climate where it was always summer and upon people who did not have to hurry about and work hard. But, graceful as they are, and appropriate to Greece and Italy, they would hardly be suitable for an American business costume in midwinter. For a tunic is not very close fitting. It is a loose garment which would be apt to fly away in our Northern gales.

The tunic was sometimes confined at the waist by a girdle and sometimes let to hang loose.

We do not wear tunics, but we admire them very much in pictures, for they show the beautiful lines of the human form instead of concealing and altering them and making them ugly by ridiculous and tight-fitting clothes—very often tight in the wrong place, as is the case with modern garments.

But there _are_ tunics worn in America, and they are never tight in the wrong place, though, truth to tell, they are not loose and flowing like the Roman or Greek tunic.

Perhaps you do not know that so commonplace an object as an onion wears a tunic, yet I assure you it is true. And the onion does not come from Rome or Greece,—that is, probably not. As far as we can find out, that homely vegetable first saw the light in the southwestern part of Asia, but it was known in Rome and Greece at a very early date, and lived in those places long before it found its way to us.

So it has seen more tunics than we have, if it is not a native Greek or Roman. Not that its garments look at all like a classical tunic!

Probably its bulb is said to be “tunicated,” or covered with tunics, because the different scales wrap about it like so many garments, and in a general way the word “tunic” is used to mean any garment.

The hyacinth, too, has a tunicated bulb. It came from the Levant, a country where people wear loose garments like the Greek and Roman tunic. I do not think, however, the bulbs are called “tunicated” because they came from the lands where tunics are worn. I think it is merely a name the botanists gave them for convenience to tell that they were covered by coats or scales.

What do you suppose a hyacinth tunic is, anyway? Merely a leaf scale! That is, instead of growing into a leaf it remained a scale, and _some_ of the scales on a full-grown bulb are really the lower parts of the leaves. The upper part has fallen off and left the fleshy base to feed the plant.

Tulips have tunics too, and so have many other plants. And bulb tunics are a _very_ convenient sort of garment to have, for they not only wrap up the plant, but feed it!

They answer the same purpose that tubers do on potato roots. You know what tubers are? They are just swollen portions of underground stems. When you eat your next potato remember it is a tuber, and that a tuber is merely a short piece of stem _very_ much thickened. If you cannot believe this, look a potato in the eyes. There you will see the truth, for the eyes are merely the joints of the stem, and at each is a little bud that in the spring will start to grow, just like the buds on the branches of a tree. The bud grows at the expense of the material in the tuber, and the hyacinth grows at the expense of the food stored in the bulb. Of course, after a while green leaves form and make more food, but the very first food comes from the thick underground scales.

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The hyacinth belongs to the royal Lily Family, and is a very great favorite with people all over the world. Sometimes its flowers are single and sometimes double, and they always give forth a delightful fragrance. Its home, as we know, is in the Levant, a country made up of the islands and the coast along the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, particularly of Asia Minor and Syria.

It grows so readily and comes up so early in the spring and is so lovely it is no wonder people everywhere cherish it. Its bulb is large and fleshy, and, as we know, is made up of thick _scales_. These scales are full of starch and other food materials to feed the young plant.

For the young plant is in the very center of the bulb, with the fleshy scales folded about it very much as the scales are folded about a tree bud. In fact, a bulb is very much like a bud. The bottom of the bulb is a _very_ short, broad stem. The scales grow on this stem as the leaves do on a branch. They are alternate in arrangement, but packed so closely together you have to look _very_ carefully in order to discover that they are arranged like leaves on a stem. After all, as we know, these scales are only modified leaves. The bracts of the pelargonium are leaves modified to protect the young buds, and the scales of the hyacinth are leaves modified to protect and feed the plant within.

For what do you think? At the very center of the hyacinth bulb is a tiny flower cluster wrapped about by half a dozen tiny leaves! These are white and delicate and very, very small. But in the spring they grow and come out of the bulb in the form of green leaves and bright flowers.

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THE BEE.

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I am a rollicking bumblebee.
I sail through the air as it pleases me.
I sail by the trees and around the flowers;
I love the sun and hate the showers.

I have a taste does credit to me;
I never eat bread and such fiddle-dee-dee.
For honey and pollen’s the sensible food;
They favor digestion and suit the mood.

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I sleep in my nest all winter long,
But rush fearlessly forth in the March wind’s song,
For I’m sure there’s some one waiting for me,
Since a hyacinth blue’s in love with this bee!

STORIES ABOUT ALL SORTS OF THINGS

NECTAR GUIDES.

The bee is always in a hurry. She flies from flower to flower as fast as she can.

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She sees the flowers far off and comes straight to them, choosing the brightest. She has learned that the bright flowers hold much honey and often have guides to the nectary, so that she does not have to hunt about, but, alighting on a flower, follows the bright guide. Sometimes it is a spot in front of the nectary and sometimes a line leading to it. It leads her at once by the shortest path to the nectar, and since she is in such haste, the nectar guides are her good friends, helping her to save time.

CELLS.

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Cells are a matter of importance.

To be sure there are cells and cells, and some are much more important than others.

For instance, there are prison cells, more’s the pity, and anther cells and honeycomb cells and ovary cells and many more like them. All these are small, hollow spaces with walls around them.

But there is another kind of cell, more important than all these others put together, and they are not hollow and do not always have a wall.

Perhaps you are not very much interested in cells, but you had better be in these we are going to talk about, for they have a great deal to do with football games and dancing and going to parties and picnics. In fact, without them there could be no football and no dancing and no parties nor picnics.

All these things depend upon cells. So we may as well begin at once to find out what they are.

These cells that we are going to talk about are alive. They are made of protoplasm. You do not know what protoplasm is? I can tell you it is time you did then, for if it had not been for protoplasm you would not be in the land of the living. The protoplasm made you; so if you are not interested in it, _I_ think you ought to have been a cabbage or a squash or a liriodendron or some other thoughtless vegetable not expected to be interested in protoplasm.

Like a good many other interesting things, protoplasm cannot usually be seen by the naked eye; it is in such small quantities that it takes a microscope to find it. And when you have found it, so far as its looks are concerned, it would hardly seem to pay for the trouble, for to the eye it is nothing but a colorless, jelly-like substance. It looks more like the white of an egg than anything else. But remember it is not safe to judge protoplasm or people by looks alone.

Napoleon was small, and he was not handsome; yet if you had seen him, you would have seen the greatest man living in the world at that time.

So when you look at protoplasm you see something very much more wonderful than it seems. In fact, the great Napoleon himself owed his physical life to protoplasm, as did also Shakespeare and Plato, and every person who has ever lived, for protoplasm is the only living matter in the world.

You cannot understand that all in a minute, but you begin to see that protoplasm is _rather_ important, and as well worth knowing about as the latest fashion in bicycles or sleeve patterns.

Sometimes a bit of protoplasm lives all by itself. It is just a little speck of colorless, jelly-like substance. Yet it can do a number of things. One little creature, which is only a bit of protoplasm, has a name much larger than itself. We call it “Amœba.”

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Rather a pretty name, on the whole, and very uncommon. I doubt if you know a single person by that name.

It is a name, too, that everybody ought to know.

Well, as I told you before, and shall probably tell you a great many more times, for I do not want you to forget it, the amœba is only a bit of protoplasm.

Yet it can go about. You watch it some fine day under your microscope and see it travel. It runs out a little, thin bit of its body, so ] and then the rest of the body sort of pulls itself up to that. In this way, by putting out little finger-like projections and drawing the rest of the body up to them, it can move quite a distance if you give it time enough. You can imagine so changeable a creature as the amœba can scarcely be found twice of the same shape, and how its friends recognize it is more than I can tell. Suppose you were in the habit of changing your shape whenever you moved, being long and thin one minute, short and thick another, having fourteen arms one day and none the next? How _could_ you expect people to know you when they met you?

But perhaps the amœba has an unsocial nature and does not care whether it is recognized or not.

Because it changes its shape so often the amœba has received its pretty name. For “amœba,” you must know, comes from a Greek word meaning “change.”

It is sometimes called “Proteus” for the same reason. Of course you know all about Proteus, the sea god who lived at the bottom of the ocean and paid homage to the great god Neptune, who was ruler of the seas. Proteus took care of the sea calves, and he had a queer way of changing his shape whenever he chose. He used to go to sleep on the rocks while the calves were sunning themselves, and because he was very wise and could help people who were in trouble, they used to go there and catch him. But he was not as friendly as he was wise, and would never tell anything unless forced to; and when he found himself a prisoner, he would at once change his form, and so try to escape by frightening his captors. He had a pleasant habit of all at once changing into an enormous serpent and opening a mouth full of frightful teeth; then, if _that_ did not frighten badly enough, he would all at once turn into a bull or a raging fire or a fierce torrent. He has been known to change into a dozen dreadful things in as many minutes, so no wonder his name has come to mean “something that changes.” And no wonder the amœba is called “proteus,” not that it indulges in any such outrageous transformations as the sea god, for it never does anything worse than change the shape of its own little jelly-like body.

Although it can move along, I do not think it would amount to much in a race, as it only moves a few inches in the course of a day; still that is a good deal, considering its size.

A great deal depends upon size in this world.

You could go as far in ten seconds as a snail could in as many hours. The distance would not count for much as far as you are concerned, but it would be a good day’s work for the snail. So when an amœba travels a few inches, that counts for as much in its life as a long day’s walk of a good many miles would in yours, or as a few hundreds of miles on a railway train.

The amœba can do more than travel. If you touch one it will shrink together, showing that this little bit of protoplasm has a sort of _feeling_ power.

When it is hungry it eats. For an amœba can get as hungry as anybody.

Hunger does not depend upon size. You can get as hungry as an elephant, although you cannot eat as much. You would starve to death, too, as soon as an elephant, perhaps sooner. An amœba no doubt gets as hungry as you do, and it certainly would starve to death if it did not have something to eat.

How can it eat without a mouth? Just as easily as it can travel without feet. You do not know protoplasm if you think it cannot eat when it is hungry. Very likely the reason it travels about is because it wants to find something good to eat. It does not care for roast turkey and cranberry sauce, nor for apple pie and plum pudding.

_That_ is not what it is looking for. It is looking for some tiny speck of food smaller than itself.

It lives in the water, of course. It would dry up if it were out in the air. You should think it would _melt_ in the water? Well, it does not, any more than a jellyfish melts. When it comes to some little speck of dead plant or animal, or, for all I know, to some living speck small enough, it proceeds to eat it.

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It glides over it in the way you know about, and wraps the food speck up in its body. Then it draws out all the good part of the food into its own substance and goes on, leaving behind the waste particles.

Do you not think that is a good deal for an amœba to be able to do? But it can do more than this; it can divide itself in two and make two amœbæ out of one.

The little amœba is called a “cell.” After awhile you will see why. The whole amœba is just one cell.

As to whether it is a plant or an animal you will have to ask the amœba, for I cannot tell you. Some think it is a plant and some say it is an animal.

I do not think it makes much difference which you say it is.

A bit of protoplasm living by itself is called a “cell.”

Many plants and animals have, like the amœba, only one cell. Very often the little one-celled being has a thick outside wall. The protoplasm changes part of the food into a hard substance, that is, it builds itself a wall.

Very often cells live together in colonies instead of living alone. In such cases, the first cell divides into two cells, but the two stay together instead of entirely separating. Then each of these two cells divides again, and the four cells stay together, and so it goes on until a large body is built up of many cells.

The truth is, plants are only collections of cells which have agreed to work together. Where there is but one cell, it has to do all sorts of work; but where there are many, some do one kind of work, some another,—just as Robinson Crusoe, living all alone on the island of Juan Fernandez, had to do all sorts of things for himself: make his own shoes and clothes, get his own food and cook it, build his own house, and gather his own wood. But in a town one set of men makes shoes, another chops wood, another raises vegetables and grain, another grinds the grain, and another bakes the bread; then they all exchange with each other, and everybody has enough—or ought to have.

So in the plant made of many cells. One set of cells makes hard walls to protect the plant. Another set draws up water from the earth for all the cells in the plant, for living things require a great deal of water. Another set takes gas from the air and changes it into food. Another set makes tubes for the sap to flow through. Other sets do other things. Each set of cells does something for the whole plant.