398 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the currant, the grape, and the whortleberry, several seeds are 

 imbedded within the fruit in a common pulpy mass ; and in others, 

 again, as in the apple, pear, quince, and medlar, they are sur- 

 rounded by a quantity of spongy edible flesh. Indeed, the variety 

 that prevails among fruits in this respect almost defies classifica- 

 tion : for sometimes, as in the mulberry, the separate little fruits 

 of several distinct flowers grow together at last into a common 

 berry ; sometimes, as in the fig, the general flower-stalk of several 

 tiny one-seeded blossoms forms the edible part : and sometimes, 

 as in the strawberry, the true little nuts or fruits appear as mere 

 specks or dots on the bloated surface of the swollen and over- 

 grown stem, which forms the luscious morsel dear to the human 

 palate. 



Yet in every case it is interesting to observe that, while the 

 seeds which depend for dispersion upon the breeze are easily de- 

 tached from the parent plant and blown about by every wind of 

 doctrine, the seeds or fruits which depend for their dispersion 

 upon birds or animals always, on the contrary, hang on to their 

 native boughs to the very last, till some unconscious friend pecks 

 them off and devours them. Haws, rose-hips, and holly-berries 

 will wither and wilt on the tree in mild winters, because they 

 can't drop off of themselves without the aid of birds, while the 

 birds are too well supplied with other food to care for them. One 

 of the strangest cases of all, however, is that of the mistletoe, 

 which, living parasitically upon forest-boughs and apple trees, 

 would, of course, be utterly lost if its berries dropped their seeds 

 on to the ground beneath it. To avoid such a misfortune, the 

 mistletoe-berries are filled with an exceedingly viscid and sticky 

 pulp, surrounding the hard little nut-like seeds ; and this pulp 

 makes the seeds cling to the bills and feet of various birds which 

 feed upon the fruit, but most particularly of the missel-thrush, 

 who derives his common English name from his devotion to the 

 mistletoe. The birds then carry them away unwittingly to some 

 neighboring tree, and rub them off , when they get uncomfortable, 

 against a forked branch the exact spot that best suits the young 

 mistletoe for sprouting in. Man, in turn, makes use of the sticky 

 pulp for the manufacture of bird-lime, and so employs against the 

 birds the very qualities which the plant intended as a bribe for 

 their kindly services. 



Among seeds that trust for their dispersal to the wind, the 

 commonest, simplest, and least evolved type is that of the ordinary 

 capsule, as in the poppies and campions. At first sight, to be 

 sure, a casual observer might suppose there existed in these cases 

 no recognizable device at all for the dissemination of the seedlings. 

 But you and I, most excellent and discreet reader, are emphatically 

 not, of course, mere casual observers. We look close, and go to 



