The Chief Gardener took them and held them side by side.
"There, you will see they are all very much alike," he said.
The children looked at them. Then Prue ran across the lawn and came back with
a little yellow bloom.
"Isn't this flower one of them, too?" she asked. "Some people call it wild strawberry, and some sink-field."
"That," said the Chief Gardener, "is cinque-foil. I suppose the name sink-field comes from that. It is French, and means five-leaved, but sink-field is not so bad a name either, for it often grows in moist places. Yes, that is a rose, too."
"Then buttercups must be roses," said Davy. "They look just like that."
"No, Davy, that is one place where our eyes must look sharp. Can you find a buttercup?"
"Oh, plenty," said Prue, and ran to bring them.
Then the Chief Gardener took a buttercup and an apple-bloom, and held them side by side. There was a difference, but not very great. Then he took his knife, and divided the blossoms in half.
"Now look again," he said, and he took a small magnifying-glass from his pocket and held it so that they could see. "The petals and the sepals (that make the corolla and the calyx, you know) are a good deal the same," he said, "but, you see, there are many more stamens in the buttercup, and then the seed pod or pods, which we call the pistils, are not at all alike. The buttercup has a lot of tiny pods or pistils inside the flower, while the apple-bloom has one round pod below the flower, and this forms the fruit. The buttercup does not make fruit. It belongs to the Crowfoot family, and is a cousin of the hepatica and of the larkspur, which you would not think from the shape of the larkspur's bloom. The Crowfoot family is not so beautiful nor so useful as the Rose family, which is, perhaps, the most useful family next to the Grass family, and certainly one of the most beautiful families in the world."
"I think the Rose family is nicer than the Grass family," said Prue.
"Oh, no," said Davy. "We couldn't do without wheat and corn, and we could do without fruit and flowers that is, of course, if we had to," he added with a sigh.
"I couldn't," said little Prue. "I like flowers best, and jelly and jam to eat on my biscuits, and you like all those things, too, Davy, and shortcake, and berry pie."
"Of course! but how would you have biscuits and shortcake without wheat to make the flour of?"
The Chief Gardener smiled.
"We can't decide it," he said. "They go together. It is said that we shall not live on bread alone, and I don't think we could live altogether on fruit and flowers, though I believe some people try to do so. Jam and bread go together, and a shortcake must have both crust and fruit to be a real shortcake. Wheat fields and orchards march side by side, and taking these together we have peach pudding and apple tart."
Prue was looking out over her little garden where the smoothly patted rows of beds made her quite happy, just to see them.
"I've got four things that begin with sweet," she said. "Sweet-pease, sweet-williams, sweet-mignonette, and sweet-alyssum."
"And my little Sweetheart is the sweetest flower of all," said the Chief Gardener.
II DIFFERENT FAMILIES OF ANTS HAVE DIFFERENT DROVES OF COWS
It is true that Davy was a little too anxious to hoe his rows of pease and salad almost before they were out of the ground, and hoed up a few plants, while Prue wanted to water her garden when the bright sun was shining, which would have baked the ground and done more harm than good. But they both knew so much more than they had known a year ago, that the Chief Gardener was glad of those little window-gardens which were now gone.
"You see, I was remembering the worm that cut off one of my cornstalks," said Davy one morning when the Chief Gardener found him digging carefully around the tender shoots. "I found one, too, but he hadn't done any harm yet."
"I'm crumbling the hard dirt around my little plants," said Prue, "it's so sharp and cakey, and I pull out every little weed I see, so they won't have a chance to get big."
The Chief Gardener looked on approvingly. Then he walked over to his own rows and looked carefully at his pease, which were just now beginning to bloom. Then he got down and looked more closely. Then he called Davy and Prue. They left their work and came quickly.
"Look here," said the Chief Gardener, "I have a whole drove of cattle in my garden."
"Cattle!"
said Davy.
"Oh, Papa's just fooling," said Prue.
"Why, no," said the Chief Gardener, "don't you see them. There is a whole drove of cows," and he pointed to some little green bug-like things that clustered on the tips of his pea-vines.
The children looked closely and then turned to him to explain.
"There are some ants there, too," said Davy. "They are crawling up and down."
"Yes," said the Chief Gardener. "They own the cows. The cows are those green things aphides, they are called, and the ants milk them. Look very carefully now."
Prue and Davy watched and saw an ant go to one of the green insects and touch with its bill first one, and then the other, of two little horns that grew from the aphid's back. And then the ant went to another aphid, and did the same thing. Then they saw that tiny drops of fluid came from the ends of these tiny green horns.