e method of fertilization in plants, as urged in an excellent paper by
a lady doctor, published in the _Parents' Review_.[16] Let me quote her
words:

"The child can learn the difference of the names, color, and forms
of flowers as soon as it can learn anything. The next step would be
to simple lessons in the different parts of a plant--the vegetative
organs of roots, stem, leaves, passing on to the reproductive
organs in the flower--calyx, corolla, stamen, and pistil. Let the
child be taught to notice that all flowers have not quite the same
organs, some bearing stamens only, which shed the powdery pollen
and are the male, or little father flowers; while others have the
pistil only, furnished with the stigma to catch the pollen, and are
the females, or little mothers; that the one sort of flowers is
necessary to the other in producing the little seed or baby plant."

Let us take a primrose. Here the mother and father elements are found in
the same flower. At the base of the flower, packed in a delicate casket,
which is called the ovary, lie a number of small white objects no larger
than butterfly-eggs. These are the eggs or ova of the primrose. Into
this casket, by a secret opening, filmy tubes thrown out by the pollen
grains--now enticed from their hiding-place on the stamens and clustered
on the stigma--enter and pour a fertilizing fluid, called "spermatozoa,"
through a microscopic gateway, which opens in the wall of the egg and
leads to its inmost heart. The ovule, or future seed, is now fertilized
and capable of producing a future primrose. Covered with many protecting
coats, it becomes a perfect seed. The original casket swells, hardens,
is transformed into a rounded capsule or seed-vessel, opening by valves
or a deftly constructed hinge. One day this seed-vessel, crowded with
seeds, breaks open and completes the cycle of reproduction by dispersing
them over the ground, where they sow themselves, and grow and become
primrose plants in their turn, starring the grass with their lovely
blossoms.[17]

Sometimes the male and female elements grow upon different plants, as in
the catkins children are so fond of gathering in the spring.

"More than two thousand years ago Herodotus observed a remarkable
custom in Egypt. At a certain season of the year the Egyptians went
into the desert, cut off branches from the wild palms, and bringing
them back