Description of Fig. 250.

ROOTS moniliform.

STEM erect, slender, herbaceous, round.

LEAVES radical and cauline, ternately compound. Cauline leaves alternate; leaflets lobed; petioles spreading at base.

INFLORESCENCE Solitary, terminal.

FLOWER. CALYX; sepals 5, polysepalous, regular, spreading, ovate: COROLLA; petals, none: STAMENS numerous; filaments threadlike; anthers oblong: PISTIL; carpels many; stigma sessile on the upper, inner face of carpel.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SEED.

EXERCISE LIV.

Parts of the seed.

We now pass to another class of observations, in which, besides noting new parts of plants, you will also have to watch the changes which take place in those parts.

PREPARE for the study of seeds by planting all the kinds you can get that are large enough for easy examination.

The seeds of the pumpkin, squash, four-o'clock, bean, pea, apple, Indian corn, oats, and barley, are good examples for the purpose. Plant two or three dozens of each sort, one inch deep, in a box of soil or sawdust, which must be kept warm and moist. Put the different kinds in rows by themselves, and mark each row, so that, when you want any particular one, you can get it without mistake.*

You should also be provided with a blank-book

*If pupils cannot get time to prepare for these exercises out of school-hours, they should be encouraged to do it during school-time.

in which to write the results of study. Such a notebook is easily made by twice folding enough sheetpaper to allow a page to each kind of seed you have planted. Write the name of a kind, as pea, oat, etc., on each successive page, till all are inserted.

When your seeds have soaked for a day or two in the wet earth, take a bean from the box and compare it with one that has not been planted.

How has it changed in appearance?

Cut it in two and see whether, like a piece of chalk, it looks alike outside and inside, or whether the parts are unlike.

Has it a skin or shell that you can loosen ?

Take a second bean from the box, cut carefully around it, and try to peel off the outer part.

SEED-COAT, OR INTEG'UMENT.-The skin or shell around the outside of a seed.

BODY, KERNEL, OR NU'CLEUS. The substance within the seed-coat.

Compare your specimen with Fig. 251.

Can you separate the seed-coat from the body of the bean as it is seen to be separated in the picture? Now take a pea from your box and see if it is made up of parts.

K

Has it a sced-coat? Is there a kernel or body within the seed-coat?

Try a pumpkin-seed. Compare the coat of a pumpkin-seed with that of the pea or bean.

Are they alike in thickness? in hardness? in color? in transparency? Name all the differences you see between them.

In the same way, take up and examine, one after another, some seeds from each of the rows. Find their parts, and compare the parts of one kind of seed with those of another kind.

If you are not able at first readily to separate a seed into distinct portions, do not hastily conclude that it is without them. Let it lie in its warm, wet bed a while longer, and then try again.

*

Now write in your note-book just what you have discovered about the parts of seeds. For instance: if at the top of the first page you have written bean, on the line beneath you now write the question, Parts? and the answer which you have found to this question-thus:

Parts? Seed-coat. Body. Coat, thin, skinny; or, on the page devoted to the apple-seed, you write

* Much that is important in their experiments, children will fail to see, and they will fancy they see much that does not exist. Their omissions, misinterpretations, and difficulties, can be dealt with in many ways, but a desire on the part of the teacher for nicety of experiment, and accuracy of statement, should never lead to discouraging criticism. To keep the child happily busy with his growing plants is the main thing, and all degrees of awkwardness and imperfection in childish performance should be tolerated.