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ways, and they are mostly contained in eatable fruits. These fruits are devoured by birds or beasts, and the hard seeds pass through their stomachs undigested, and, owing probably to the gentle heat and moisture to which they have been subjected, in a condition highly favourable for germination. The dry fruits or capsules containing the first two classes of seeds are rarely, if ever, conspicuously coloured; whereas the eatable fruits almost invariably acquire a bright colour as they ripen, while at the same time they become soft and often full of agreeable juices. Our red haws and hips, our black elderberries, our blue sloes, and whortleberries, our white mistletoe and snowberry, and our orange sea-buckthorn, are examples of the colour-sign of edibility; and in every part of the world the same phenomenon is found. Many such fruits are poisonous to man and to some animals, but they are harmless to others; and there is probably nowhere a brightly-coloured pulpy fruit which does not serve as food for some species of bird or mammal.

Protective Colours of Fruits.-The nuts and other hard fruits of large forest-trees, though often greedily eaten by animals, are not rendered attractive to them by colour, because they are not intended to be eaten. This is evident; for the part eaten in these cases is the seed itself, the destruction of which must certainly be injurious to the species. Mr. Grant Allen, in his ingenious work on Physiological Esthetics, well observes that the colours of all such fruits are protective -green when on the tree, and thus hardly visible among the foliage, but turning brown as they ripen and fall on the ground, as filberts, chestnuts, walnuts, beechnuts, and many others. It is also to be noted that

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many of these are specially though imperfectly protected; some by a prickly coat as in the chestnuts, or by a nauseous covering as in the walnut; and the reason why the protection is not carried further is probably because it is not needed, these trees producing such vast quantities of fruit, that however many are eaten, more than enough are always left to produce young plants. In the case of the attractively coloured fruits, it is curious to observe how the seeds are always of such a nature as to escape destruction when the fruit itself is eaten. They are generally very small and comparatively hard, as in the strawberry, gooseberry, and fig; if a little larger, as in the grape, they are still harder and less eatable; in the fruit of the rose (or hip) they are disagreeably hairy; in the orange tribe excessively bitter. When the seeds are larger, softer, and more eatable, they are protected by an excessively hard and stony covering, as in the plum and peach tribe; or they are inclosed in a tough horny core, as with crabs and apples. These last are much eaten by swine, and are probably crushed and swallowed without bruising the core or the seeds, which pass through their bodies undigested. These fruits may also be swallowed by some of the larger frugivorous birds; just as nutmegs are swallowed by pigeons for the sake of the mace which incloses the nut, and which by its brilliant red colour is an attraction as soon as the fruit has split open, which it does upon the tree.

There is, however, one curious case of an attractively coloured seed which has no soft eatable covering. The Abrus precatoria, or rosary bean," is a leguminous shrub or small tree growing in many tropical countries,

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whose pods curl up and split open on the tree, displaying the brilliant red seeds within. It is very hard and glossy, and is said to be, as no doubt it is, "very indigestible." It may be that birds, attracted by the bright colour of the seeds, swallow them, and that they pass through their bodies undigested, and so get dispersed. If so it would be a case among plants analogous to mimicry among animals—an appearance of edibility put on to deceive birds for the plant's benefit. Perhaps it succeeds only with young and inexperienced birds, and it would have a better chance of success, because such deceptive appearances are very rare among plants.

The smaller plants whose seeds simply drop upon the ground, as in the grasses, sedges, composites, umbelliferæ, &c., always have dry and obscurely-coloured capsules and small brown seeds. Others whose seeds are ejected by the bursting open of their capsules, as with the oxalis and many of the caryophyllaceæ, scrophulariaceæ, &c., have their seeds very small and rarely or never edible.

It is to be remarked that most of the plants whose large-seeded nuts cannot be eaten without destroying their germinating power-as the oaks, beeches, and chestnuts are trees of large size which bear great quantities of fruit, and that they are long lived and have a wide geographical range. They belong to what are called dominant groups, and are thus able to endure having a large proportion of their seeds destroyed with impunity. It is a suggestive fact that they are among the most ancient of known dicotyledonous plants-oaks and beeches going back to the Cretaceous period with little change of type, so that it is not improbable that

they may be older than any fruit-eating mammal adapted to feed upon their fruits. The attractive coloured fruits on the other hand, having so many special adaptations to dispersal by birds and mammals, are probably of more recent origin.' The apple and plum tribes are not known earlier than the Miocene period; and although the record of extinct vegetable life is extremely imperfect, and the real antiquity of these groups is no doubt very much greater, it is not improbable that the comparative antiquity of the fruitbearing and nut-bearing trees may remain unchanged by further discoveries, as has almost always happened as regards the comparative antiquity of animal groups.

Attractive Colours of Flowers.-The colours of flowers serve to render them visible and recognizable by insects, which are attracted by secretions of nectar or pollen. During their visits for the purpose of obtaining these products, insects involuntarily carry the pollen of one flower to the stigma of another, and thus effect crossfertilization; which, as Mr. Darwin was the first to demonstrate, immensely increases the vigour and fertility of the next generation of plants. This discovery has led to the careful examination of great numbers of flowers; and the result has been that the most wonderful and complex arrangements have been found to exist, all having for their object to secure that flowers shall not be self-fertilized perpetually, but that pollen shall be carried, either constantly or occasionally, from the flowers of one plant to those of another. Mr. Darwin himself first worked out the details in orchids, primulas, and some other groups; and hardly

1 I owe this remark to Mr. Grant Allen, author of Physiological Esthetics,

less curious phenomena have since been found to occur even among some of the most regularly-formed flowers. The arrangement, length, and position of all the parts of the flower is now found to have a purpose, and not the least remarkable portion of the phenomenon is the great variety of ways in which the same result is obtained. After the discoveries with regard to orchids, it was to be expected that the irregular, tubular, and spurred flowers should present various curious adaptations for fertilization by insect-agency. But even among the open, cup-shaped, and quite regular flowers, in which it seemed inevitable that the pollen must fall on the stigma and produce constant self-fertilization, it has been found that this is often prevented by a physiological variation--the anthers constantly emitting their pollen either a little earlier or a little later than the stigmas of the same flower, or of other flowers on the same plant, were in the best state to receive it; and as individual plants in different stations, soils, and aspects, differ somewhat in the time of flowering, the pollen of one plant would often be conveyed by insects to the stigmas of some other plant in a condition to be fertilized by it. This mode of securing cross-fertilization seems so simple and easy, that we can hardly help wondering why it did not always come into action, and so obviate the necessity for those elaborate, varied, and highly complex contrivances found perhaps in the majority of coloured flowers. The answer to this of course is, that variation sometimes occurred most freely in one part of a plant's organization, and sometimes in another; and that the benefit of cross-fertilization was so great that any variation that favoured it was

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