The method of fertilization of the flowers satisfactorily accounts for the great amount of pollen produced. Being blown by the wind or carried by insects, much of it is wasted, consequently there must be ample allowance made for this waste. So the flowers produce thousands of pollen grains which they can never use themselves.
VIII
WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM THE LIFE OF THE FISH
Whatever is universal is good.
Whatever is universal is true.
Whatever is universal is beautiful.
Nothing disperses, so to speak, the fogs enveloping the thought of sex like the realization of its universality. The air clears when we know that every living thing is bound by the same laws, even the flowers in our gardens.
We have an interesting testimony as to the helpfulness of this thought from one of the great educators of youth, Fröbel. Speaking of his own childhood when he became conscious of what his father, who was a minister, was constantly meeting in his parish work, he says:
"Matrimonial and family relations were often the subject of his admonitory and corrective conversation and remonstrances. The way in which my father spoke of this, made me consider the subject as one of the most pressing and difficult for man, and in my youth and innocence, I felt deep grief and pain that man alone among created things should pay the penalty of such a sexual difference that made it hard for him to do right.... Just then my oldest brother, who lived away from home, came back for a time, and when I told him my delight in the purple threads of the hazel buds, he made me notice a similar sexual difference among flowers.