V
THE FIRST LIFE ON EARTH
The next day Elsie was so eager for the hour to come when she should learn the secret of the animals that she had been waiting in the hammock quite a little while when her mother came down stairs and as soon as she appeared in sight Elsie clapped her hands joyously, crying out:
“Now I shall hear how the animals get their honey, sha’n’t I, mumsey? But, mumsey, there isn’t anything like the petals of a buttercup on an animal, unless it’s his ears—do animals have their honey there—where they join the body—like the buttercups?” 44
Mrs. Edson could not help laughing at this funny notion.
“No, darling,” she answered, “animals have no honey anywhere. In the plants there is honey because they must have something to attract the insects to them, for they are rooted in the ground and can’t move around to carry their pollen to the other plants. And this pollen must be carried, you remember, for that is the way, and the only way, in which little ones are made to be born. So the flower has the honey in order to pay the insect for marrying it. But animals can move around. They can go to each other and carry their own pollen, so they do not need honey or anything but themselves to attract each other. In animals there is love instead of honey. They love each other, in their way, and 45 so come together and mingle their eggs and pollen. Only it is not called pollen in animals, as I said before. It is called zoösperms, pronounced ‘zoo-o-sperms.’ That is another name that you must not forget, for it is to the animal what pollen is to the plant. And in order that little animals may be born it is quite as necessary that the zoösperms cover or fertilize the eggs, as, with the plants, it is for the pollen to fertilize the seeds.”
“But, mamma,” said Elsie, wonderingly, “you said, I think, that every plant had an ovary—”
“No, darling, I said that every female plant had an ovary.”
“Oh, yes, female plant! That has an ovary, and every male plant has a stamen, and I think you said that they must have, didn’t you?” 46