THE ORIGIN OF FRUITS. 609 



of animals than a cone like that of pines and fir-trees ? Yet even this 

 hard, scaly covering has been modified, in the course of ages, so as to 

 form a fruit. In the cypress, with its soft young cones, we can see 

 dimly the first step in the process ; in the juniper, the cone has become 

 quite succulent and berry-like ; and finally, in the red fruit of the yew, 

 all resemblance to the original type is entirely overlaid by its acquired 

 traits. 



Equally significant is the fact that closely-allied species often choose 

 totally different means for attracting or escaping observation. Thus, 

 within the limits of the rose tribe itself we get such remarkable varia- 

 tions as the strawberry, where the receptacle forms the fruit; the apple, 

 which depends on the peduncle, or swollen stalk, for its allurement ; 

 the raspberry, where each seed-vessel of the compound group has a 

 juicy coating of its own, and so forth : while, on the other hand, the 

 potentilla has no fruit at all, in the popular sense of the word ; and the 

 almond actually diverges so far from the ordinary habits of the tribe as 

 to adopt the protective tactics of a nut. Similarly, in the palm tribe, 

 while most species fortify themselves against monkeys by shells of ex- 

 travagant hardness, as we see in the vegetable ivory, and the solid 

 coquilla-nuts from which door-handles are manufactured, a few kinds, 

 like the date and the doom-palm, trust rather to the softness and sweet- 

 ness of their pulp, as aids to dispersion. The truth which we learn 

 from these diverse cases may be shortly summed up thus : Whatever 

 peculiarities tend to preserve the life of a species, in whatever opposite 

 ways, equally aid it in the struggle for life, and may be indifferently 

 produced in the most closely-related types. 



And now let us glance for a moment less fully than the subject 

 demands, for this long exposition has run away with our space at the 

 reactive effects of fruit upon the animal eye. "We took it for granted 

 above that birds and mammals could discriminate between the red or 

 yellow berry and the green foliage in whose midst it grows. Indeed, 

 were other proof wanting, we should be justified in concluding that 

 animals generally are possessed of a sense for the discrimination of 

 color, from the mere fact that all those fruits and flowers which depend 

 for their dispersion or fertilization upon animal agency are brightly 

 tinted, while all those which depend upon the wind, or other insentient 

 energies, are green or dull-brown in hue. But many actual observa- 

 tions, too numerous to be detailed here, also show us, beyond the possi- 

 bility of error, that the higher animals do, as a matter of fact, possess 

 a sense of color, differing in no important particular from that of civil- 

 ized man. 



Whether this sense was developed, however, by the constant search 

 for berries and insects, or whether it was derived from a still earlier 

 ancestry, it would be very difficult to decide. It is possible that, as 

 we saw reason to believe in the case of the flowers and the insect vi- 

 sion, the colors of fruits and the color-sense of birds and mammals may 

 vol. xin. 39 



