"Come out into the garden," said Fred, "and let us have a chat about the flowers. Can you tell me what is the use of the flowers, Norah?""They have to form seeds," said Norah. "We sow the seeds the next season, and they grow up into new plants.""Quite right," said Fred. "Look at all these pretty flowers on the table. They seem to be made of leaves, but the leaves are not coarse and green, like the real leaves of the plant. They are soft and smooth and thin.
If we take them in our hands, we are almost sure to bruise them. We may call them the flower-leaves. They are not all alike. See, there are red, white, pink, blue, yellow-all sorts of gay colours.""It is these flower-leaves that make our gardenslook so pretty." said Norah.
"Yes, " said Fred, "but the flower-leaves, after a time, are of no further use. They fall off.
"Let us strip off the flower-leaves from some of our flowers. That will do. Now what have we got inside?
"These little slender stalks that stand up in a circle are the stamens. Teacher showed them to us this morning.
"Look, Norah," he went on, "at the top of each of them there is a little yellow knob. Teacher says these knobs are little boxes filled with yellow dust. We call this dust pollen.