THE ORIGIN OF FRUITS. 



597 



and rearranged them as little as possible, preferring the certainty of 

 leaving them in an inartificial state to the risk of spoiling by manipu- 

 lation whatever value they may possess as records made at the time. 

 Mind. 







THE ORIGIN OF FRUITS. 



By Professor GRANT ALLEN. 



IN the whole museum of Nature the eye of the artist can find nothing 

 lovelier than flowers ; but the second rank in beauty may be fairly 

 claimed on behalf of fruits. Whether we look at the golden oranges, 

 the pink-cheeked mangoes, the purple star-apples, and the scarlet cap- 

 sicums of the south, or at our own crimson cherries, blushing grapes, 

 bright holly-berries, and rosy apples, we are equally struck with the 

 delicacy of their melting tints and the graceful curves of their rounded 

 form. Our painters have reveled in their rich coloring ; and even our 

 sculptors, whose fastidious art compels them to reject that meretricious 

 charm, have loved to chisel their swelling contours in snowy stone. As 

 they hang pendent from their native boughs, clustering in brilliant 

 masses, or scattered here and there as points of brighter light amid the 

 dark foliage which throws up in strong relief their exquisite hues, we 

 may recognize in their beauty the ultimate source of all that refined 

 pleasure which mankind derives from the varied shades of earth and sea 

 and sky, of flower and bird and butterfly, and even of the " human face 

 divine " itself. From the contemplation of ruddy or snowy berries in 

 primeval forests the frugivorous ancestors of our race first acquired the 

 taste for brilliant hues, whose final outcome has produced at length our 

 modern picture-galleries and palaces, our flower-gardens and conserva- 

 tories, our household ornament and our decorative art. 



In a previous paper on " The Origin of Flowers," ' we endeavored 

 to trace the mutual reactions of insects and blossoms upon one an- 

 other's forms and hues. But we then deferred for a while the consider- 

 ation of the further question " Why do human beings admire these 

 bright whorls of colored leaves, whose primitive function consisted in 

 the attraction of bees and butterflies? Through what community of 

 origin or nature does the eye of man find itself agreeably stimulated by 

 the tints which were first developed to suit the myriad facets of primeval 

 insects ? " The answer to this question we have now to attempt, by 

 showing the various steps through which the coverings of certain seeds 

 acquired, for the vertebrate orders the birds and quadrupeds exactly 

 the same allurements of color, scent, and taste, which flowers had 

 already acquired for the articulate orders the bees and butterflies. 



1 See Popular Science Monthly Supplement, No. XIV., p. 151. 



