The little plant, as you might expect, gets inside its seed almost exactly as the little bird or frog or fish gets inside its egg. The “string beans” which we eat in the summer are fat pods stuffed out with bean-stuff to be used in making seeds. There are tiny beans inside, which are new-laid bean eggs, and so have no little plant inside, but only bean-stuff. The little bean plant, starting from nothing, forms one part after another, like chick and fish.

But where does the egg come from in the first place? The bean egg forms in the pod, too small at first to be seen at all, and keeps growing until it is big enough to begin to form the new plant. In exactly the same way, the mother fish, and the mother frog, and the hen, have a sort of pod inside them. First this pod stuffs and fattens itself out with egg-stuff, like a string bean. Then some of it turns into little eggs, too small to be seen. These grow and grow, like the beans in the pod, while the pod shrinks away. Only after they have grown a great deal, do they begin to form little beans, or fish or chicks inside.

[Seeds that have Plumes and Wings]

First of all, in short, the bean pod begins as a minute speck and grows into a proper pod. Then the bean inside this pod begins as a minute speck, and grows into a proper bean. Then the new bean plant inside this bean begins as a minute speck and grows into a proper bean plant, ready to be hatched out and shift for itself. So part of the mother plant becomes pod, and part of the pod becomes bean, and part of the bean becomes little growing plant. So it is with little fishes and little birds and little rabbits and puppies and kittens and all the rest of the little animals that you know.

V
What Little Boys and Girls are Made Of

“What are little boys made of, made of?
What are little boys made of?
Snaps and snails and puppy dog’s tails;
That’s what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of, made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all that’s nice;
That’s what little girls are made of.”

So says the old nursery rhyme. It has this much truth in it, that little boys and little girls are far from being alike, and it isn’t worth while to try to make either one over into the other. What little boys and girls are really made of, and all other living things as well, is a much longer story.

Oddly enough one can tell this story more simply by telling first about little star-fish and sea-urchins, and what they are made of. Star-fishes’ and sea-urchins’ eggs (for the two creatures are really very much alike, for all they look so different) are much like the eggs of fishes. They are round and transparent, and so minute that they look like fine red dust in the water. Naturally, therefore, few people ever see them at all.