[Footnote 17:  have quoted here from The Ascent of Man by Professor Drummond, pp. 292, 293; but any standard work on botany will give you the method of the fertilization of plants in greater detail.]

[Footnote 18:  Ibid., p. 310.]

[Footnote 19:  Erroneously called neuter, as in reality it is an imperfectly developed female, and is only capable of producing males.]

[Footnote 20:  I owe my first clear apprehension of the gradual evolution of the preservative and altruistic elements in nature, arising from the struggle for existence, to a sermon of Dr. Abbott’s called The Manifestation of the Son of God, now, I fear, out of print.  Of course Darwin recognized these factors as a necessary complement to the survival of the fittest, else had there been no fittest to survive; but the exigencies of proving his theory of the origin of species necessitated his dwelling on the destructive and weeding-out elements of Nature—­“Nature red in tooth and claw,” rather than the equally pervasive Nature of the brooding wing and the flowing breast.  Had not Professor Drummond unfortunately mixed it up with a good deal of extraneous sentiment, his main thesis would scarcely have been impugned.]

[Footnote 21:  In case this method of teaching should seem to some mothers too difficult, I intend to embody it in a simple “Mother’s Talk on Life and Birth,” which a mother can read with her boys.]

[Footnote 22:  See a White Cross paper of mine called My Little Sister.  Wells Gardner, Darton and Co., London.]

[Footnote 23:  Twice since the wreck of the Birkenhead has the same true manhood been evinced on the high seas in the face of almost certain death—­once in the wreck of the troopship, the Warren Hastings, and again by the crew and the civilian passengers of the Stella.  Perfect order was maintained, and though, ultimately all the men were saved, not a man stirred hand or foot to save himself till the women and children had first been safely got on shore.]

[Footnote 24:  French and English, by Philip Hamerton, p. 44.]

[Footnote 25:  The British Zulu.  Wells Gardner, Darton and Co., London.]

CHAPTER VII

EARLY MANHOOD

If, in the words of the great educator I have already quoted, the chief moral teaching and moral trend of the character must be given in the schoolboy days, yet early manhood presents its own fruitful field for the influence of a mother on the side of whatsoever things are pure and lovely.  The methods of exerting this influence must change as your son grows from a boy into a man; the inevitable reticence, the exquisite reserve of sex, must interfere with the old boyish confidences and with your own freedom of speech.  Other barriers, too, will most likely spring up as your son goes forth into the world and mixes freely