156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ON FEUITS AND SEEDS. 



By Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, F. R. S. 



OUR eloquent countryman, Mr. Ruskin, commences his work on 

 " Flowers " by a somewhat severe criticism of his predecessors. 

 He reproduces a page from a valuable but somewhat antiquated work, 

 " Curtis's Magazine," which he alleges to be " characteristic of botani- 

 cal books and botanical science, not to say all science," and complains 

 bitterly that it is a string of names and technical terms. No doubt 

 that unfortunate page does contain a list of synonyms and long words. 

 But, in order to identify a plant, you must have synonyms and tech- 

 nical terms, just as to learn a language you must have a dictionary. 

 To complain of this would be to resemble the man who said that 

 Johnson's "Dictionary" was dry and disjointed reading. But no one 

 would attempt to judge the literature of a country by reading a dic- 

 tionary. So also we can not estimate the interest of a science by read- 

 ing technical descriptions. On the other hand, it is impossible to give 

 a satisfactory description of an animal or plant except in strict techni- 

 cal language. Let me reproduce a description which Mr. Ruskin has 

 given of the swallow, and which, indeed, he says in his lecture on that 

 bird, is the only true description that could be giv^en. His lecture was 

 delivered before the University of Oxford, and is, I need hardly say, 

 most interestinor. 



Now, how does he describe a swallow ? " You can," he says, " only 

 rightly describe the bird by the resemblances and images of what it 

 seems to have changed from, then adding the fantastic and beautiful 

 contrast of the unimaginable change. It is, an owl that has been 

 trained by the Graces. It is a bat that loves the morning light. It 

 is the aerial reflection of a dolphin. It is the tender domestication of 

 a trout." That is, no doubt, very poetical, but it would be absolutely 

 useless as a scientific description, and, I must confess, would never 

 have suggested, to me at least, the idea of a swallow. 



But, though technical terms are very necessary in science, I shall 

 endeavor, as far as I can, to avoid them here. As, however, it will be 

 impossible for me to do so altogether, I will do my best at the com- 

 mencement to make them as clear as possible, and I must therefore ask 

 those who have already looked into the subject to pardon me if, for a 

 few moments, I go into very elementary facts. In order to understand 

 the structure of the seed, we must commence with the flower, to which 

 the seed- owes its origin. Now, if you take such a flower as, say, a ge- 

 ranium, you will find that it consists of the following parts : firstly, 

 there is a whorl of green leaves, known as the sepals, and together 

 forming the calyx ; secondly, a whorl of colored leaves, or petals, gen- 

 erally forming the most conspicuous part of the flower, and called the 



