, but it impresses upon it its own characteristics. In other
words, the seed inherits from the pollen as well as from the ovule.
Inheritance is a very wonderful thing. It is that power which causes the
offspring to resemble its parents. In some wonderful way the tiny ovule,
the tiny pollen grain, remember everything about the plant they came
from and are able to transmit this memory to the developing offspring,
so that it may become like its parents.

Again, the child under eight can understand the principal facts of
fertilization. The older child can add to his stock of facts, and one of
the things he will be likely to want to know is how the little pollen
grain up on the stigma can influence the ovule down in the ovary.

We know how the ovule is formed. We know that it grows from the inside
of the ovary. If we were able to examine the development of the pollen
grain inside the anther from its very beginning, we should find the same
thing true of it. The anther is a little box like the ovary, and the
pollen grain grows from the inside of it, being at first a part of it
and nourished by the same sap. When it became ripe it fell free into the
anther cavity. We then have a little box full of ripe pollen grains.[1]

The pollen grain is like the ovule in structure, only much smaller. It
is so tiny and the anther so small that we cannot watch its development
as we can that of the ovule. But botanists have taken great pains to
examine the pollen and to watch its development under the microscope, so
that from them we know the truth.

If we examine the young ovule we find it apparently nothing but a little
sac full of a semi-liquid substance. This semi-liquid substance, or at
least a part of it, is alive and is very important. It is protoplasm,
which is the only living substance; all the living parts of plants and
animals are made from protoplasm.

[Illustration: POLLEN GRAINS (MAGNIFIED), AND STIGMA]

The pollen grain is also a little sac containing protoplasm. Thus we
have these two little sacs of living substance, each growing in a
similar manner, one to the inside of an ovary, the other to the inside
of an anther. Naturally, it is the living substance in these little sacs
that is important. It is the living substance of the ovule that unites
with the living substance of the pollen grain to become a seed; or, to
say the same thing another way, it is the living substance of the pollen
grain that unites with that of the o