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 Carlo M. Cipolla

THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY

With a foreword by
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
 CONTENTS

Foreword by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Publisher’s Note
The Mad Millers to the Reader
Introduction
I. The First Basic Law
II. The Second Basic Law
III. A Technical Interlude
IV. The Third (and Golden) Basic Law
V. Frequency Distribution
VI. Stupidity and Power
VII. The Power of Stupidity
VIII. The Fourth Basic Law
IX. Macro Analysis and the Fifth Basic Law
Appendix
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CARLO M. CIPOLLA (1922–2000) was an Italian economic

historian, Fulbright Fellow and professor at the University of
California, Berkeley. Cipolla was elected as a Corresponding Fellow of
the British Academy in 1989 and awarded the International Balzan
Prize for Economic History in 1995. He also held honorary degrees in
Italy and Switzerland.
His classic treatise The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity has sold
more than half a million copies worldwide in over ten languages.
 FOREWORD BY NASSIM NICHOLAS
TALEB

When I start at the top left corner of a page in The Basic Laws of
Human Stupidity, I have the feeling of reading a satire. Ten lines into
it, some doubts erupt – could this be serious? When I reach the
bottom right corner, I am certain it must be a serious work of
scholarship in economic analysis. Then, upon turning the page, the
cycle starts again, thankfully, because economics is boring (by
design) and this is playful, hence fun to read.
The Basic Laws asserts that 1) there will always be more stupid
people than you think, 2) the proportion of stupid people is invariant
to intellectual, social or geographic segmentation. The ratio will be
the same among Nobel Prize winners as it will be among a selection
of tax accountants (except I am sure that there must be a higher
prevalence among laureates of the pseudo-Nobel in economics). I
will leave the remaining laws to avoid spoiling the read – this is a
very short book.
By the time my eyes reach the bottom right corner, and I realise
this is not a joke, the following ideas pop into my head. First, the
author has a formal axiomatic definition of what stupid means:
someone who harms others without procuring any gain for himself
or herself – in contrast to the much more predictable bandit who
gains something from harming you. As such, stupid persons can
cause a lot of damage – unlike bandits, they have no interest in the
survival of the system because they do not benefit from their
stupidity. Second, the laws here are real laws, as far as economic
laws are concerned, no less rigorously obtained than Adam Smith’s
three laws, the law of diminishing return, Okun’s law, or some such
thing you forget about seconds after taking the final exam. (By
contrast, I promise that you will remember Cipolla’s laws forever.)
Finally, one wonders: why is there a constant proportion of stupid
people, invariant to time, place, geography, profession, body mass
index, degrees of separation from the Queen of Denmark, and
professional rank? The solution of the mystery may lie in the Italian
title of Cipolla’s work, Allegro ma non troppo. Fast, but not too fast.
Could it be that Mother Nature (or God, whatever your theology)
wants to put a brake on things, reduce the speed of progress, slow
down the growth of your employer, prevent GDP from an exponential
rise so the economy doesn’t overheat? So She created the stupid
person acting against both his and the collective interest to do just
that?
A masterly book.
 PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Originally written in English, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity was

published for the first time in 1976 in a numbered and private
edition bearing the unlikely imprint of ‘Mad Millers’.
The author believed that his short essay could only be fully
appreciated in the language in which it had been written. He
consequently long declined any proposal to have it translated. Only
in 1988 did he accept the idea of its publication in an Italian version
as part of the volume entitled Allegro ma non troppo, together with
the essay Pepper, Wine (and Wool) as the Dynamic Factors of the
Social and Economic Development of the Middle Ages, also originally
written in English and published privately by Mad Millers for
Christmas 1973.
Allegro ma non troppo has been a bestseller both in Italy and in
all the countries where translated versions have appeared. Yet, with
an irony that the author of these laws would have appreciated, it has
never been published in the language in which it was first written.
Thus, more than a quarter of a century since publication of Allegro
ma non troppo, this in fact is the first edition that makes The Basic
Laws of Human Stupidity available in its original version.
 THE MAD MILLERS TO THE READER

The private edition of 1976 was preceded by the following

publisher’s note written by the author himself:
The Mad Millers printed only a limited number of copies of this book
which addresses itself not to stupid people but to those who on
occasion have to deal with such people. To add that none of those
who will receive this book can possibly fall in area S of the basic
graph (figure 1) is therefore a work of supererogation. Nevertheless,
like most works of supererogation, it is better done that left undone.
For, as the Chinese philosopher said: ‘Erudition is the source of
universal wisdom: but that does not prevent it from being an
occasional cause of misunderstanding between friends.’
INTRODUCTION
Human affairs are admittedly in a deplorable state. This, however, is
no novelty. As far back as we can see, human affairs have always
been in a deplorable state. The heavy load of troubles and miseries
that human beings have to bear as individuals as well as members
of organised societies is basically a by-product of the most
improbable – and I would dare say, stupid – way in which life was
set up at its very inception.
After Darwin we know that we share our origin with the lower
members of the animal kingdom, and worms as well as elephants
have to bear their daily share of trials, predicaments, and ordeals.
Human beings, however, are privileged in so far as they have to bear
an extra load – an extra dose of tribulations originated daily by a
group of people within the human race itself. This group is much
more powerful than the Mafia, or the Military Industrial Complex, or
International Communism – it is an unorganised unchartered group
which has no chief, no president, no by-laws and yet manages to
operate in perfect unison, as if guided by an invisible hand, in such a
way that the activity of each member powerfully contributes to
strengthen and amplify the effectiveness of the activity of all other
members. The nature, character and behaviour of the members of
this group are the subject of the following pages.
Let me point out at this juncture that most emphatically this little
book is neither a product of cynicism nor an exercise in defeatism –
no more than a book on microbiology. The following pages are in
fact the result of a constructive effort to detect, know and thus
possibly neutralise one of the most powerful, dark forces which
hinder the growth of human welfare and happiness.
 CHAPTER I

THE FIRST BASIC LAW

The First Basic Law of Human Stupidity asserts without ambiguity
that

‘Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number

of stupid individuals in circulation.’fn1

At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague and horribly ungenerous.

Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter
how high are one’s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly
and recurrently startled by the fact that:
a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn
out to be unashamedly stupid;
b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in
one’s activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and
unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most
improbable moments.
The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific
numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total
population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an
underestimate. Thus in the following pages I will denote the fraction
of stupid people within a population by the symbol σ.
 CHAPTER II

THE SECOND BASIC LAW

Cultural trends now fashionable in the West favour an egalitarian
approach to life. People like to think of human beings as the output
of a perfectly engineered mass production machine. Geneticists and
sociologists especially go out of their way to prove, with an
impressive apparatus of scientific data and formulations that all men
are naturally equal and if some are more equal than the others, this
is attributable to nurture and not to nature.
I take an exception to this general view. It is my firm conviction,
supported by years of observation and experimentation, that men
are not equal, that some are stupid and others are not, and that the
difference is determined by nature and not by cultural forces or
factors. One is stupid in the same way one is red-haired; one
belongs to the stupid set as one belongs to a blood group. A stupid
man is born a stupid man by an act of Providence.
Although convinced that fraction σ of human beings are stupid
and that they are so because of genetic traits, I am not a
reactionary trying to reintroduce surreptitiously class or race
discrimination. I firmly believe that stupidity is an indiscriminate
privilege of all human groups and is uniformly distributed according
to a constant proportion. This fact is scientifically expressed by the
Second Basic Law which states that

‘The probability that a certain person be stupid is

independent of any other characteristic of that person.’

In this regard, Nature seems indeed to have outdone herself. It is

well known that Nature manages, rather mysteriously, to keep
constant the relative frequency of certain natural phenomena. For
instance, whether men proliferate at the Northern Pole or at the
Equator, whether the matching couples are developed or
underdeveloped, whether they are black or white the female to male
ratio among the newly born is a constant, with a very slight
prevalence of males. We do not know how Nature achieves this
remarkable result but we know that in order to achieve it Nature
must operate with large numbers. The most remarkable fact about
the frequency of stupidity is that Nature succeeds in making this
frequency equal to the probability σ quite independently from the
size of the group. Thus one finds the same percentage of stupid
people whether one is considering very large groups or one is
dealing with very small ones. No other set of observable phenomena
offers such striking proof of the powers of Nature.
The evidence that education has nothing to do with the probability
σ was provided by experiments carried on in a large number of
universities all over the world. One may distinguish the composite
population which constitutes a university in five major groups,
namely the blue-collar workers, the white-collar employees, the
students, the administrators and the professors.
Whenever I analysed the blue-collar workers I found that the
fraction σ of them were stupid. As σ’s value was higher than I
expected (First Law), paying my tribute to fashion I thought at first
that segregation, poverty, lack of education were to be blamed. But
moving up the social ladder I found that the same ratio was
prevalent among the white-collar employees and among the
students. More impressive still were the results among the
professors. Whether I considered a large university or a small
college, a famous institution or an obscure one, I found that the
same fraction σ of the professors are stupid. So bewildered was I by
the results, that I made a special point to extend my research to a
specially selected group, to a real élite, the Nobel laureates. The
result confirmed Nature’s supreme powers: σ fraction of the Nobel
laureates are stupid.
This idea was hard to accept and digest but too many
experimental results proved its fundamental veracity. The Second
Basic Law is an iron law, and it does not admit exceptions. The
Women’s Liberation Movement will support the Second Basic Law as
it shows that stupid individuals are proportionally as numerous
among men as among women. The ‘underdeveloped’ of the ‘Third
World’ will probably take solace at the Second Basic Law as they can
find in it the proof that after all the developed are not so developed.
Whether the Second Basic Law is liked or not, however, its
implications are frightening: the Law implies that whether you move
in distinguished circles or you take refuge among the head-hunters
of Polynesia, whether you lock yourself into a monastery or decide to
spend the rest of your life in the company of beautiful and lascivious
women, you always have to face the same percentage of stupid
people – which percentage (in accordance with the First Law) will
always surpass your expectations.
 CHAPTER III

A TECHNICAL INTERLUDE
At this point it is imperative to elucidate the concept of human
stupidity and to define the dramatis persona.
Individuals are characterised by different degrees of propensity to
socialise. There are individuals for whom any contact with other
individuals is a painful necessity. They literally have to put up with
people and people have to put up with them. At the other extreme
of the spectrum there are individuals who absolutely cannot live by
themselves and are even ready to spend time in the company of
people whom they do not really like rather than to be alone.
Between these two extremes, there is an extreme variety of
conditions, although by far the greatest majority of the people are
closer to the type who cannot face loneliness than to the type who
has no taste for human intercourse. Aristotle recognised this fact
when he wrote that ‘Man is a social animal’ and the validity of his
statement is demonstrated by the fact that we move in social
groups, that there are more married people than bachelors and
spinsters, that so much wealth and time is wasted in fatiguing and
boring cocktail parties and that the word loneliness carries normally
a negative connotation.
Whether one belongs to the hermit or to the socialite type, one
deals with people although with different intensity. Even the hermits
occasionally meet people. Moreover, one affects human beings also
by avoiding them. What I could have done for an individual or a
group but did not do is an opportunity-cost (i.e. a lost gain or loss)
for that particular person or group. The moral of the story is that
each one of us has a current balance with everybody else. From
action or inaction each one of us derives a gain or a loss and at the
same time one causes a gain or a loss to someone else. Gains and
losses can be conveniently charted on a graph, and figure 1 shows
the basic graph to be used for the purpose.
The graph refers to an individual – let us say Tom. The X axis
measures the gain that Tom derives from his actions. On the Y axis
the graph shows the gain that another person or group of persons
derive from Tom’s actions. Gains can be positive, nil or negative – a
negative gain being actually a loss. The X axis measures Tom’s
positive gains to the right of point O and Tom’s losses to the left of
point O. The Y axis measures the gains and losses of the person or
persons with whom Tom dealt respectively above and below point O.
To make all this clear, let us make a hypothetical example and
refer to figure 1. Tom takes an action which affects Dick. If Tom
derives from the action a gain and Dick suffers from the same action
a loss, the action will be recorded on the graph with a dot which will
appear in the graph somewhere in area B.

FIG. 1.
 Gains and losses may be recorded on the X and Y axis in dollars or
francs, if one wants, but one has to include also psychological and
emotional rewards and satisfactions as well as psychological and
emotional stresses. These are intangibles and they are very difficult
to measure according to objective standards. Cost-benefit analysis
can help to solve the problem, although not completely, but I do not
want to bother the reader with such technicalities: a margin of
imprecision is bound to affect the measurement but it does not
affect the essence of the argument. One point though must be made
clear. When considering Tom’s action one makes use of Tom’s values
but one has to rely on Dick’s values and not on Tom’s values to
determine Dick’s gains (whether positive or negative). All too often
this rule of fairness is forgotten and many troubles originate from
failure to apply this essentially urbane point of view. Let me resort
once again to a banal example. Tom hits Dick on Dick’s head and he
derives satisfaction from his action. He may pretend that Dick was
delighted to be hit on the head. Dick, however, may not share Tom’s
view. In fact he may regard the blow on his head as an unpleasant
event. Whether the blow on Dick’s head was a gain or a loss to Dick
is up to Dick to decide and not to Tom.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
spring is at hand. The great shiny hoods look more like snails than
like flowers; and indeed usually the flowers are not in sight at all, so
well are they shielded by these hood-like leaves.
But each little hidden flower has four flower leaves, four stamens,
and one pistil. When they have been dusted with pollen by fly
visitors, and are preparing to turn into fruit, the purple hoods wither
away. Then the plant sends up clusters of large bright green leaves.
In June you see these great leaves everywhere in the wet woods.
So if you wish to be on hand to welcome the very first flower of the
year, you must begin to keep your eyes open by the end of February.
You must visit the swamps each day, and look for the purple hoods
inside which are snugly hidden the little blossoms of the skunk
cabbage.
And I advise you now to take a sheet of paper and make a list of
the plants as you find them in flower. Put down the date of each
blossom as it appears, and the place where you find it. If you begin
to do this as children, and keep it up when you are older, you will
take real delight in the habit. Each year it will interest you more and
more to turn back to the old lists and discover whether the flowers
are on time, or whether they are late or early in making their first
appearance.
I hope your teacher will start you at once with such a list; for the
sooner you begin, the more complete will be your pleasure in this
delightful season.
 PUSSY WILLOWS

S OON after the skunk cabbage has sent up its purple hoods
comes the pussy-willow season. But it is not every child who has
the luck to be in the country at this time.
There is a clean, sweet smell in the air. Down in the boggy
meadow, just before nightfall, the little frogs sing so loud that you
wonder if they are trying to make you believe the birds have come
back.
The brook is getting a bright green border. The buds on the trees
are so big that you feel sure in a few hours they must burst open.
And you know that each new day may bring with it some happy
surprise,—a bird, a leaf, or a flower that you have not seen for many
a long month.
So when you find the willow branches set thick with silken pussies,
you know that a happy time has begun, at least for you country
children.
And even the city children learn to love these soft pussies when
they are placed in tall vases on the teacher’s desk.
If you look carefully at the different branches, you see that they
bear different kinds of pussies; and your teacher will tell you, or
perhaps you will discover yourselves, that these different branches
were broken from different trees.
 Fig. 197

Do you know what each “pussy,” or tassel, is made up of?

Each tassel is made up of many tiny flowers.
But willow flowers are built on quite a different plan from cherry
flowers. If you pick apart one of these tassels, and examine a single
blossom, you will find it hard to believe that it is a flower at all.
On one branch the tassels are all golden yellow. The flowers that
make up these yellow tassels have neither flower leaves nor pistils.
Each blossom has two stamens which are fastened to a little fringed
leaf, and nothing more. Such a flower, much magnified, is given in
the picture (Fig. 197). The golden color comes from the yellow pollen
which has been shaken from the dust boxes.
The other branch is covered with silvery green tassels. Each
flower in these tassels is made up of a single pistil, which is also
fastened to a little fringed leaf (Fig. 198).
 Fig. 198

So you see the building plan used by one kind of pussy-willow

flowers is nothing but two stamens; while the plan used by the other
kind is still simpler, it is nothing but one pistil.
The golden dust is carried by the bees from the willows which bear
dust boxes to those other willows whose flowers have only
seedboxes.
When they have given to the bees their pollen, the yellow tassels
fade away; but the silvery green tassels, on account of their
seedboxes, grow large and ripe, turning into the fruit shown in Fig.
62, p. 61; and this fruit is one of the kind which scatters its seeds
abroad by fastening them to silky sails.
 ALDERS AND BIRCHES

T HERE is another shrub or low tree growing along the brook’s

edge which flowers almost as early as the willows.
This is the alder.
Perhaps you noticed last fall that these alders were hung with a
quantity of little green tassels. These tassels did not fall off with the
leaves in November. Through the long winter they clung to the shrub.
Sometimes they wore little coats of ice which made them look like
the glass ornaments on a Christmas tree.
When the warm weather came, they put off their ice coats, and
grew larger and longer, and at last let out a quantity of stamens.

Fig. 199

But on the same alder tree that bears these tassels with flowers
made up of stamens or dust boxes (Fig. 199, a), you find also the
tassels flowers made up of pistils (Fig. 199, b).
If you make a search, you will find the little upright clusters
composed of these flowers with pistils.
Late in the year, when these clusters have turned into fruit, they
look like this picture (Fig. 200).
 Fig. 200

The pretty birches are cousins to the alders, and keep house in
much the same way, bearing the tassels with stamens (Fig. 201, a)
and the little clusters made up of flowers with pistils (Fig. 201, b) on
the same tree.

Fig. 201

The tassels on some of the birches are very beautiful. When full
grown, they are golden yellow, and so long and soft and graceful that
one feels like stroking them and playing with them as he would with
a kitten.
I hope every country child who reads this book and does not
already know the willows, the alders, and the birches, will make their
acquaintance this spring, and will examine their two kinds of flowers.
And I hope that branches from the different trees will be brought into
the city schoolroom, so that all can see these flowers, which are
among the very earliest of the year.
 THE GREAT TREES

M OST people seem surprised to learn that all kinds of trees have
flowers. In March and April they go to the woods in search of
the trailing arbutus, the violet, the anemone; and when they have
picked a quantity of these, they come home and say, “These are the
only flowers we saw to-day.”
But if they had looked overhead, up into the trees, they would
have seen many more; for each tree has its own flower, and most of
the trees blossom very early in the year, before they put out their
leaves. There is a good reason for this, which I will tell you by and
by.

Fig. 202

One of the early trees to flower is the swamp maple. In March or

April its bright red blossoms tinge the wet woods with warm color.
Sometimes the snow lies thick on the ground at this season, and the
little red flower clusters fall, and look wonderfully pretty against the
smooth white sheet which is drawn beneath the trees.
At the same season, in our city parks and streets, sharp eyes will
discover the yellowish blossoms of the silver maple. Both of these
trees flower before they leaf.
The building plan used by maple flowers is rather confusing. In
one flower you will find both calyx and corolla, but not in another.
One blossom will have both stamens and pistils, another will have no
pistils.

Fig. 203

Fig. 202 shows you a blossom from the sugar maple. It has
stamens, but no pistils. Next you see what was once a flower
containing both stamens and pistils (Fig. 203). The withered stamens
can still be seen; and the pistil is turning into the well-known maple
key.

Fig. 204

Fig. 205
 The great elms also put out their flowers before their leaves. Here
you see a flower cluster from the white elm (Fig. 204). Fig. 205
shows you one of these little flowers enlarged; and in Fig. 206 you
have the blossom cut open so as to display its pistil, which grows
into the winged fruit you saw on p. 62.

Fig. 206

In some of our city streets grows the poplar. Its flowers are
crowded into long green tassels. Many of these fall to the pavement
below, and lie there, looking like great caterpillars. These tassels are
those which bear the flowers with stamens. Now, if we were in the
woods, we should be pretty sure to find near by another poplar
whose tassels do not fall so quickly. This is because these are made
up of flowers with pistils. They cling to the tree not only till they have
been powdered with pollen from the neighboring poplar, but till their
tiny seeds have had time to ripen and are ready to start out on their
life journey.
 THE UNSEEN VISITOR

I PROMISED to tell you why so many of the trees flower before they
leaf.
Many of these tree blossoms are neither bright enough to attract
the attention of the bees and butterflies, nor so fragrant as to tempt
the passing insects to visit them; for when the flower handkerchiefs
are not large and bright enough to signal the bees, the blossom often
gives notice of its presence by a strong perfume. How, then, is the
pollen from one flower to reach the pistil of another? And especially
how can this be arranged when the flowers with pollen may live quite
a way off—on another tree, in fact—from the flowers with pistils?
“Perhaps the birds carry it,” suggests some child.
But if these little flowers are not beautiful enough, or sweet-
smelling enough, to please the bees and butterflies, it is hardly
probable that the birds will pay them any attention.
So let us go out into the woods with our eyes and our ears wide
open, and see if we can discover some flower visitor that does not
ask for fine clothes and sweet smells.
Through the bushes comes the lisp of the song sparrow. From
overhead falls the note of the bluebird. The bees are buzzing about
the golden willow tassels. On the top of an old tree trunk a butterfly is
drowsing in the sun’s rays. But already we know that neither bird, nor
bee, nor butterfly will go out of its way to help our pale, scentless
little tree blossoms.
A squirrel darts from under cover, and runs along the stone wall.
Among the dead leaves at our feet a little striped snake lies in a
sluggish coil. But squirrel and snake would be alike useless as flower
visitors.
We are almost tempted to give up trying to guess the answer to
the riddle. Somewhat discouraged, we stop to rest on an old log
overgrown with delicate mosses.
A soft, sighing sound creeps through the pines at the foot of
yonder hill. Over the little hollow sweeps a gust of wind. A faint
cloud, as of dust, fills the air. One of the children begins to sneeze.
Where can the dust come from? The roads are still deep with mud.
And, besides, ordinary dust does not make us sneeze as though it
were pepper.
Ah, my friend, you are getting warm, very warm indeed; for this
dust is no dried earth from the highroad. No, it is made up instead of
golden grains from the dust boxes that are swaying in the wind on
yonder trees. And as the trees just now are bare of leaves, the
journey of the pollen through the air is an easy matter. It is carried
along by the wind, settling here, there, and everywhere, sometimes
in our throats and noses in such a fashion as to make us sneeze, but
also on the tops of many little pistils whose seeds cannot ripen
without its gift of new life.
And so, although we have not seen the visitor who befriends these
little flowers that are neither beautiful nor fragrant, we have heard his
voice as it came whispering through the pines; and we know that this
whisper is the gentle voice of the wind.
Now you understand that it is well for those trees whose flowers
depend upon the wind for their pollen, to blossom before their leaves
are out, and thus likely to interfere with the pollen in reaching its
destination.
 PLANT PACKAGES

Fig. 207

O N your walks through the woods these spring days I want you to
notice the neat and beautiful way in which plants do their
packing; for the woods now are full of plant packages,—little bundles
of leaves and flowers, done up with the greatest care.
Some of these have just appeared above the ground. Others have
burst from the branches of the trees and shrubs.
Of course, a plant does not like to send its young, delicate leaves
and flowers into the cold world without wrapping them up, any more
than your mother would like to send your baby brother out for the
first time without a great deal of just such bundling-up.
 Fig.
208

Fig.
209

And so well wrapped are many of these plant babies, that it is not
an easy matter to guess just what they are, what kinds of leaves and
flowers will appear when the wrappings have been thrown aside.
 Fig. 211

Fig. 210

Sometimes the package looks like the sharp-pointed object in the

picture at the head of this chapter (Fig. 207). Soon the leaves push
their way out of their papery envelope, and before long our friend
Jack-in-the-pulpit himself appears.
Sometimes it is such a woolly roll as you see in the next picture
(Fig. 208). This roll soon uncurls into a pretty fern (Fig. 209).
The beech tree folds its leaves like fans (Fig. 210). The preceding
picture (Fig. 211) shows you how carefully and cleverly the
hobblebush packs its young leaves.
During their babyhood many leaves wear a hairy coat as a
protection from both cold and heat; but when their green skin
becomes thicker, they throw this off.
Most of these plant packages are very interesting and beautiful,
and well worth your attention. I wish that during these weeks of early
spring the country schools would hold exhibitions of these babes in
the woods, asking each child to bring what he considers a good
specimen of a plant package.
 UNDERGROUND STOREHOUSES

L ONG ago we learned that certain plants stow away the food
which they are not fitted to use at the time in those thick
underground stems which most people call roots.
This food they hold over till the next year.
It is often a surprise, these spring days, to see how suddenly a
little plant will burst into blossom. One does not understand how it
has had time to get up such a display. Had it been obliged to depend
for food upon new supplies taken in by its roots and leaves, the
flower would have put off its first appearance for many a day.
So when a plant surprises you with any such sudden and early
blossoms, you can be pretty sure that its food supply has been on
hand all winter.
Both in the garden and in the woods you can see for yourselves
that this is so. In the garden perhaps the earliest flower to appear is
the lovely little snowdrop. The snowdrop’s food is stored away in the
“bulb,” as we call its thick, underground stem, which lies buried in the
earth.
The other early garden flowers, such as the hyacinth, crocus,
daffodil, and tulip, are able to burst into beautiful blossoms only
because of the care and labor with which they laid by underground
provisions last year.
And in the woods at this season you find the yellow adder’s
tongue, spring beauty, anemone, wake-robin, Jack-in-the-pulpit, wild
ginger, and Solomon’s seal. Each of these plants has stores of food
hidden in its underground stem. This may take the shape of a bulb,
or a tuber, or a rootstock; but in any case it shows you at once that it
is a little storehouse of food.
A collection of the different kinds of underground stems which
serve as storehouses for the early-flowering plants would be quite as
interesting to work over as a collection of plant packages.
 DIFFERENT BUILDING PLANS

T HIS morning let us take a stroll in the woods with the idea of
noticing the different building plans used by the early flowers.
First we will go to the spot where we know the trailing arbutus is
still in blossom. Pick a spray, and tell me the plan of its flower.
“There is a small green cup, or calyx, cut into five little points,” you
say; “and there is a corolla made up of five flower leaves.”
But stop here one moment. Is this corolla really made up of five
separate flower leaves? Are not the flower leaves joined in a tube
below? If this be so, you must say that this corolla is five-lobed, or
five-pointed, not that it has five flower leaves.
“And there are ten pins with dust boxes, or stamens.”
Yes, that is quite right.
“And there is one of those pins with a seedbox below, one pistil,
that is, but the top of this pistil is divided into five parts.”
Well, then, the building plan of the trailing arbutus runs as follows:
—
1. Calyx.
2. Corolla.
3. Stamens.
4. Pistil.
So far, it seems the same plan as that used by the cherry tree, yet
in certain ways this plan really differs from that of the cherry
blossom. The calyx of the cherry is not cut into separate leaves, as is
that of the arbutus; and its corolla leaves are quite separate, while
those of the arbutus are joined in a tube.
 Fig. 212

The cherry blossom has more stamens than the arbutus. Each
flower has but one pistil. But the pistil of the arbutus, unlike that of
the cherry, is five-lobed.
So, although the general plan used by these two flowers is the
same, it differs in important details.
Above you see the flower of the marsh marigold (Fig. 212). Its
building plan is as follows:—
1. Flower leaves.
2. Stamens.
3. Pistils.
This, you remember, is something like the building plan of the
easter lily. The lily has a circle of flower leaves in place of calyx and
corolla. So has the marsh marigold. But the lily has six flower leaves,
one more than the marsh marigold, and only six stamens, while the
marsh marigold has so many stamens that it would tire one to count
them.
And the lily has but one pistil (this is tall and slender), while the
marsh marigold has many short, thick ones, which you do not see in
the picture.
So these two flowers use the same building plan in a general way
only. They are quite unlike in important details.
 Fig. 213

The pretty little liverwort and the delicate anemone use the same
building plan as the marsh marigold. This is not strange, as all three
flowers belong to the same family.
The yellow adder’s tongue is another lily. It is built on the usual lily
plan:—
1. Six flower leaves.
2. Six stamens.
3. One pistil.
The wild ginger (Fig. 213) uses the lily plan, inasmuch as it has no
separate calyx and corolla; but otherwise it is quite different. It has
no separate flower leaves, but one three-pointed flower cup. It has
stamens, and one pistil which branches at its tip.
The next picture (Fig. 214) shows you the seedbox, cut open, of
the wild ginger.

Fig. 214