I should show how these multiply by fission, the creature dividing into two, when it is impossible to tell which is the father and which is the mother.

I would then pass upwards to more complex organisms, where two individuals are required to form the offspring.

You could explain the whole process by the method of fertilization in plants, as urged in an excellent paper by a lady doctor, published in the _Parents' Review_.[16] Let me quote her words: "The child can learn the difference of the names, color, and forms of flowers as soon as it can learn anything.

The next step would be to simple lessons in the different parts of a plant--the vegetative organs of roots, stem, leaves, passing on to the reproductive organs in the flower--calyx, corolla, stamen, and pistil.

Let the child be taught to notice that all flowers have not quite the same organs, some bearing stamens only, which shed the powdery pollen and are the male, or little father flowers; while others have the pistil only, furnished with the stigma to catch the pollen, and are the females, or little mothers; that the one sort of flowers is necessary to the other in producing the little seed or baby plant." Let us take a primrose.