602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



depending wholly upon the stock of nutriment laid up for it in the 

 corm. 



If we look at the parts of plants which are used as food by man of 

 other mammals, we shall see even more clearly the community of nature 

 between the animal functions and those of seeds, flowers, and bulbs. 

 It is true that the graminivorous animals, like deer, sheep, cows, and 

 horses, live mainly off the green leaves of grasses and creeping plants. 

 But we know how small an amount of food they manage to extract from 

 these fibrous masses, and how constantly their whole existence is de- 

 voted to the monotonous and imperative task of grazing for very life. 

 Those animals, however, who have learned to live at the least cost to 

 themselves always choose the portions of a plant which it has stored 

 with nourishment for itself or its offspring. Men and monkeys feed 

 naturally off fruits, seeds, and bulbs. Wheat, maize, rye, barley, oats, 

 rice, millet, peas, vetches, and other grains or pulses, form the staple 

 sustenance of half mankind. Other fruits largely employed for food are 

 plantains, bananas, bread-fruit, dates, cocoanuts, chestnuts, mangoes, 

 mangostines, and papaws. Among roots, tubers, and bulbs, stored with 

 edible materials, may be mentioned beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, 

 swedes, ginger, potatoes, yam, cassava, onions, and Jerusalem arti- 

 chokes. But if we look at the other vegetables used as food, we shall 

 observe at once that they are few in number, and unimportant in eco- 

 nomical value. In cabbages, Brussels sprouts, lettuce, succory, spinach, 

 and water-cress, we eat the green leaves ; yet nobody would ever dream 

 of making a meal off any of these poor food-stuffs. The stalk or young 

 sprout forms the culinary portion of asparagus, celery, seakale, rhubarb, 

 and angelica, none of which vegetables are remarkable for their nutri- 

 tious properties. In all the remaining food-plants, some part of the 

 flowering apparatus supplies the table, as in true artichokes, where we 

 eat the receptacle, richly stocked with nutriment for the opening florets ; 

 or in cauliflower, where we choose the young flower-buds themselves. 

 In short, we find that men and the higher animals generally support 

 themselves upon those parts of plants in which energy has been accu- 

 mulated either for the future growth and unfolding of the plant itself, 

 or for the sustenance of its tender offspring. 



And now, after this long preamble, let us come back to our original 

 question, and seek to discover what is the origin of fruits. 



In botanical language, every structure which contains the seeds 

 resulting from the fertilization of a single blossom is known as a fruit, 

 however hard, dry, and unattractive, may be its texture or appearance. 

 But I propose at present to restrict the term to its ordinary meaning in 

 the mouths of every-day speakers, and to understand by it some kind 

 of succulent seed-covering, capable of being used as food by man or 

 other vertebrates. And our present object must be simply to discover 

 how these particular coverings came to be developed in the slow course 

 of organic evolution, 



