Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/643

Rh by personal observation, which has not yet reached so far) that all flowers that want the bees to visit them have bright colors. This is like ladies who want the gentlemen to visit them, and then put on their finest clothes.

The Great Mistake.—We thought there were three more petals in the middle of the corolla. These were smaller than the others, and divided at the top like a funny M. (The child then made a drawing in illustration.) Each stands inside a gold-striped petal, and has a groove on the outer side like a bath-tub. In this a princess is bathing. She is a stamen, with a long, whitish anther like a veil over her head. So there were three stamens inserted with the petals.

How we found out the Truth.—(This process is introduced with some solemnity, as befits its importance.) 1. We looked to see how the pollen got on the stigma. (Introduction to the biological method of studying structure in association with function.) 2. We noticed that the pollen could slip down the groove into the tube leading to the ovary. 8. We saw that the petal-like pieces were fastened together in the middle of the perianth, making a solid white cylinder which passed into the green tube. (Another drawing from memory illustrated this.) 4. It was plain that the white cylinder was the style, because it went to the ovary. 5. Then mamma said (recognition of authority and testimony again) that the petal-like pieces were the stigma, immensely big. (The incident showed the function of the reason in unraveling the deceptions imposed by the senses and the superficial aspect of things.)

Ovary—at the bottom of the tube (ovary inferior)—has three lodges and a great many ovules.

(Thus the botanical analysis was rigidly accurate and complete. But, instead of being a dry schedule, it comprised a mass of vivid, glowing impressions destined to remain forever as a typical group of ideas in the child's mind. The prolonged, patient, sympathetic study of the individual preceded the abstract study of a class of flowers. In the future it was intended that the child should construct her own classes from among the botanical individuals she should really learn to know.)



HE marine fauna of the globe may be divided into the littoral, the deep-sea, and the pelagic faunas. Of the three regions inhabited by these faunas, the littoral is the one in which the conditions are most favorable for the development of new forms through the working of the principle of natural selection. As Professor Lovèn writes, "The littoral region comprises the favored zones of the sea where light and shade, a genial temperature, currents changeable in power and direction, a rich vegetation spread over extensive areas, abundance of food, of prey to allure, of enemies to withstand or evade, represent an infinitude of agents competent to call into play the tendencies to vary which are embodied in each species, and always ready by modifying its parts to respond to the influences of external conditions." It is consequently in this littoral zone, where the water is more than elsewhere favorable 