IV. A ROADSIDE PLANT

THIS brave little plant lives by the roadside all the summer through. By its side are ever so many plants with looks and ways quite unlike its

own.

Boys and girls living side by side copy each other's ways. This child of the roadside never copies. I do not know that it envies the other plants their gifts; it certainly does not need to, having so many of its own. Nor does it seem to find fault with them when they press against it in the struggle to get air and light. Each takes what it can get of sunshine and rain—more, alas, than it needs of roadside dust.

Butter and eggs found early in life a little law, close at its heart, which as fast as was needful told it how to live. It was the same law that its ancestors had. The race to which it belongs has a history written in men's books, which must be a grand thing to a plant. To do a new thing is not to be thought of. It would upset everything to have a new way for butter and eggs!

A ROADSIDE PLANT

7

Just how it had been handed down that it had but a single summer to live the plant does not know, any more than a little girl knows how it is she does things that make people say: "How like she is to her mother when she was young!"

The plant only knows better than to try to get ready for any other weather than we have between May and November.

Its life law taught it to get something ready in which it could keep the finest little touch of life it had ever known.

To make sure it should not fail there must be a great many of these, and the boxes that hold them must drop into the friendly earth when they are ready to leave the mother plant.

All of you know how at the right time Spring comes with the only right keys and lets the life begin again. The body part could not stand the cold of winter, so it has to be given up in autumn and made anew every year in spring.

What other plants could tell the same story up to this point?

V. BUTTER AND EGGS

THE way of this plant is to grow tall and to stand upright; therefore its stem must be strong, for the blossoms are heavy. According to its strength it will be from six to eighteen inches in height. The wind will blow upon it, and it must bend in

See how narrow its leaves are!

order not to break.

This is the way to

not like to crowd

have a great many, for leaves do each other. The leaves are gray green, except in swampy places, where they may be quite fresh and bright. They are joined, as the picture shows you, directly to the stem.

The flower wants to attract attention. It is good for it to be bright, and the two colors, yellow and orange, are better than one. The leaves protect it from crawling insects which it does not want, and the bright colors draw to it some of the flying ones that it wishes help from.

On a single stalk there will be many blossoms, but not all at once. The lower ones open first. When the bees have found its nectar and pollen a blossom fades and drops, and others higher up will take their turn.

BUTTER AND EGGS

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We may find on the same stalk seed pods nearly ripe, fading blossoms, others just opening, and tightshut buds. It may even happen that when frost comes early there will still be tiny buds at the top.

The form of the blossoms is the best part of the story. There is a spur for the nectar with a plenty of pollen, but both are shut away from sight. Ants and small flies are not able to get it; they find no opening. Bees, being heavier, open the lid when they light upon it. Their weight opens it. They push the head in and their long tongues reach the sweet drop.

While they are feeding so daintily their heads will be near to the stamens where the pollen is. And pollen will be carried to other butter and eggs blossoms, for when bees go out for this flower's nectar they will seldom visit other kinds of flowers.

This pollen carrying is what the plants need. The bees are their messengers. When the pollen and nectar are gone the flowers take down their sign to the bees. The blossoms fade and drop.

VI. NETS AND TRAPS

THIS title makes you think of animals; but the creatures caught are not such as thoughtless people set traps for.

It is a little plant that sets traps of its own making to catch insects, not for sport, but to keep itself alive.

Most plants depend upon the ground, and use their roots for getting food. The sundews have very weak roots, and they find this other way so profitable that they do not need to try to strengthen their roots.

The flower stem rises about an inch

and a half in height and bears a delicate white blossom.

The deadly weapons of destruction are in the rosettes of green and scarlet leaves that lie close to the ground.

The microscope shows that every leaf is thickly covered with hairs,—a full-sized leaf might have two hundred of them, and each of these ends in an ovalshaped knob which is a little gland.