GOURDS AND BOTTLES. 317 



ticular plant is specially exposed. The red berries of our English 

 bryony are eaten by birds, who aid, of course, in disseminating 

 the seeds ; but the big and swollen root, known to French herbal- 

 ists as the navet du (liable, in which the plant stores all its ac- 

 cumulated material for next year's growth, is strenuously pro- 

 tected from the attacks of rabbits, pigs, and other grubbing 

 animals by an intensely bitter and poisonous principle which 

 chemists call bryonine. Colocynth, again — the amorous colocynth 

 — is a plant closely allied to the melon and cucumber ; but in this 

 case the intensely bitter and poisonous essence (the "uncom- 

 pounded pills " of the poet) is diffused in the fruit itself, which, 

 like that of the squirting cucumber, desires to repel rather than 

 to entice the attentions of animals. In the edible cucumber, once 

 more, which prefers to be eaten, the bitter principle is collected at 

 the stalk-end of the unripe fruit, as well as generally in the outer 

 rind, thus serving to prevent attacks in the early stages of growth, 

 or unauthorized grubbing into the soft pulp by useless insects. I 

 suppose I need hardly remind even the non-agricultural mind in 

 these days of villa-gardening that the ripe cucumber is bright 

 yellow, smooth, and faintly sweetish ; on our tables it always ap- 

 pears in its unripe stage, when it is green, hard, and covered ex- 

 ternally with rough excrescences, intended to repel the attacks of 

 enemies. In the early gherkin state it is even prickly. 



The fruit of the actual bottle-gourcl itself is intermediate in 

 size between the great tropical calabash and the little bryony- 

 berries of our northern hedge-rows. Its one noteworthy pecul- 

 iarity lies in its hard, coriaceous, and shining rind, far more woody 

 in character than even that of its near allies the pumpkins and 

 the calabashes. This peculiarity, again, is not without a meaning 

 in the history of the race : it points back with no uncertain finger 

 (why should gourds be denied fingers ?) to the subtropical origin 

 of the gourd species. For the bottle-gourd itself, to employ the 

 language most frequently applied to our Aryan brother, is a 

 native of India, though it has long been cultivated for the sake of 

 its fruits round the whole Mediterranean. Now, it is a noticeable 

 fact in the philosophy of fruits that most fruits of northern 

 climates, like the strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, and currant, 

 can be picked off the bush, tree, or vine, and popped at once into 

 the mouth without any preparation ; but almost all tropical fruits, 

 like the orange, pineapple, mango, and banana, require a plate 

 with a knife and fork to eat them with ; in other words, they can 

 only be eaten after we have stripped off a hard or nauseous rind. 



Why this difference ? Well, it has reference clearly to the 

 kind of animals by which the seeds of each are oftenest dissemi- 

 nated in the native condition. Northern fruits, in short, are 

 mainly eaten by small birds, which swallow them whole, but 



