lower so that its
head hangs right above the ovary. Here you see that all of the stamens
are above the ovary, and the reason why they are placed there by
nature you will see very soon. What I wish now is to show you why the
bee came to the flower."

"I know--it was for honey! Isn't that what you said before, mamma?"

"Yes, darling, but do you see any honey here?"

"No, mamma, and I never knew before that buttercups had honey. I
always thought honey came from a beehive."

"It does come to us from a beehive, but it comes from flowers first,
and one of the many kinds that furnish it is this buttercup. The bee
sips it from the flowers, just a tiny bit from each blossom that he
visits, and when he has enough he takes it home to the hive and puts
it away to eat by-and-by, in the winter, when there are no flowers
growing for him to rifle. He does it just as men lay away money for 'a
rainy day,' as we say, and as squirrels lay up a store of nuts for the
cold weather. Now, suppose you count those flattened, round-cornered
parts of the buttercup--how many are there?"

"Five," said Elsie quickly.

"Yes, there are five of them, and they are called petals. You will
notice that they are much narrower and slighter at the bottom than
they are at the top. It is at the bottom that they are joined to the
central part of the flower. Now, just where they are connected with
this central part there is a tiny sack of honey."

"It must be _very_ tiny," said Elsie, regarding the slender connection
earnestly, "for there isn't room enough for much, I'm sure. And it
must be all covered up, for I can't see any signs of it."

"It is covered up. There is a very small scale, or leaf, over it to
protect it from those insects who have no right to the honey. But the
bee knows how to get at it, and he does so very quickly, once he
alights on the blossom, as we have just seen one do. For while he
appeared as if he were merely tumbling clumsily around on the flower
he was sampling those honey-sacks, and we saw how speedily he finished
all five of them on this flower and then buzzed busily away to the
other."

"He was just the same as at dinner, then, wasn't he mamma! But why did
he go to the other flower--didn't he get all he wanted from this
one?"

"No, darlingest, he gets but very little from each flower. If he could
take all he wanted from one he would never fly right to another. And
then, if all the other insects should do the same, the whol