Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/688

668 up, and thrusts off the calyx-cover, which falls to the earth, carrying with it the dubious corolla, which is intimately united to it on its inside. Thus, what is left is the lower part of the calyx, which is really a woody cup, with its pistillate organs in the centre. But, though a cup-like body, it has four rib-like markings on the outer side, which



plainly indicate the sepaloid divisions. Look at the fruit, or seed-capsule, which is given about the natural size at the bottom and to the right of Fig. 3. Bristling from the inner rim or edge of the calyx, stand the thread-like stamens, each with its golden anthers atop, making a showy display for what would otherwise be, from its extreme simplicity, a very unhandsome flower.

The growth of the young eucalypt affords some points of strange interest. There is the rapidity of growth of the three species which have been best tried, and which certainly will figure largely as the world's future timber-trees: E. globulus, the blue-gum; E. gigantea, the stringy-bark; and E. amygdalina, the messmate, or peppermint-tree.