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In other families each flower of such an inflorescence would be subtended by a bract, according to the general rule that in the higher plants side branches are situated in the arils of leaves. Bracts are reduced leaves, but the spikes of the cruciferous plants are generally devoid of them. The flower-stalks, with naked bases, seem to arise from the common axis at indefinite points.

The hapless fly is impaled with an inch or two of the flowering spike of blady grass to which a portion of the white inflorescence adheres, and is released. Under such handicap flight is slow and eccentric, often, indeed, concentric, and the boy watches with unfeigned delight while his ears are soothed by the laboured hum.

Place them under a strong glass, and who can fail to wonder at the miracles of form and color that are revealed? From these tiny flowerets the scale runs upward until it touches the hybrid rose. During this period, also, many of the forest trees emulate the wild flowers at their feet until their inflorescence culminates in the white cord-like fringe that foretells the spiny chestnut burrs.

The foliage of the plant is so distinct as to yield botanical characters of sufficient importance to justify this specific designation. The leaflets are reduced in numbers and greatly modified, and the flowers in the inflorescence are reduced to two or three. This curious race came in suddenly, without any premonition, and the locality and date of its mutation are still on record.

The highest peak, which presents a buttressed face to the north, and overlooks our peaceful bay, is crowned with a forest of bloodwoods, upon which the jungle steadily encroaches. The swaying fronds of aspiring palms, adorned in due season with masses of straw-coloured inflorescence, to be succeeded by loose bunches of red, bead-like berries, shoot out from the pall of leafage.

In our day, among the successors of those first tiny hearts, are some that, by virtue of their massive bulk, have earned the glorious name of chou quintal, as who should say a hundredweight of cabbage. They are real monuments of green stuff. Later, man thought of obtaining a generous dish with a thousand little sprays of the inflorescence. The cabbage consented.

If a deep, cordial, and clarified nature will but give us his heart in a pure and boundless bravery of confession, if, like autumn plants, that cast forth their seeds, winged with down, to the four winds of heaven, or like the blossoms of spring and early summer, that yield up their preciousness of pollen to the forage of bees, and even by being so robbed attain to the hearts of neighbor-blossoms, and accomplish that mystery of fructification which is to make glad the maturer year, if so this inflorescence of eternity that we name a Noble Man will yield up the golden pollen of his soul, even to those that in visiting him seek but their own ends, and if so he will intrust winged words, words that are indeed spiritual seeds, purest, ripest, and most vital products of his being, to the winds of time, he will be sure to reach some, and they to reach others, and there is no telling how far the seminal effect may go; there is no telling what harvests may yellow in the limitless fields of the future, what terrestrial and celestial reapers may go home rejoicing, bearing their sheaves with them, what immortal hungers may be fed at the feasts of earth and heaven, in final consequence of that lonely and faithful sowing.

With an inarticulate cry she ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles, and their sap dripped red. Then the overpowering scent of the blossom began to make her head reel. How they clung to him! She tore at the tough ropes, and he and the white inflorescence swam about her. She felt she was fainting, knew she must not.

The forest trees appear with their foliage freshly expanded some; as the tulip-tree, the dogwood, and the white magnolia, already in the act of inflorescence. The woods no longer maintain that monotonous silence which they have preserved throughout the winter.

Both sorts are to be found upon every spike of bloom, as the inflorescence begins at the base and proceeds upward. As we look into the more open flower we observe a dark-colored speck, which, by analysis, proves to be the lid of the anther. Below the flattened tip of the column, and at a sharp inward angle, is the stigma. The entrance is thus much narrowed.