110 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



require to be placed at a distance from the ground, 

 beyond the reach of snails, larvae, ants, rodents, and 

 larger quadrupeds. The prickles of the rasp and 

 bramble are probably of quite as much use in 

 protecting the fruit as in protecting the flowers 

 and foliage. The contrivances Kerner has described 

 as intended to ward ofP unwelcome guests from 

 flowers may, in many instances, be of equal or 

 greater importance as a protection to the fruit. 



Succulent fruits commonly have seeds so hard 

 that they resist the action of the mandibles, gizzard, 

 and stomach of most birds. In drupaceous fruits 

 the seed itself may be comparatively soft and easily 

 injured, but it is enclosed for protection in a woody 

 endocarp or stone. In the pomegranate, where the 

 testa is soft, the central core of the seed is hard. 

 In any case, the part ultimately dispersed is hard. 

 This in the date and grape is the seed, in the 

 strawberry and fig the fruit or achene, in the cherry, 

 rasp, and bramble the endocarp, and in the goose- 

 berry and currant the indurated core of the seed. 

 Indurated seeds and fruits are not confined to those 

 plants which employ birds in the work of dissemina- 

 tion. Mice, squirrels, and other small rodents con- 

 sume large numbers of seeds, and where this danger 

 has to be met it will be of the highest importance 

 to a plant to possess hard seeds. This is perhaps 

 the explanation of the remarkably hard nutlets of 

 some of the Labiatse and Boraginacese as also of 

 the stone-like seeds of Brazil nut. The flinty cocci 

 of Litliospermum are calculated to give even a rodent 

 the toothache. The glassy grains of Coix lacryma, 

 known as Job's-tears and used as beads, and the 

 horny albumen of the palm Phyteleps macrocarpa, 

 which furnishes vegetable ivory, are marked ex- 

 amples of this excessive hardness. Squirrels, from 

 their habit of storing up nvits, may often, through 

 accidentally dropping them, help in dispersion, but 

 it can hardly be said that in the fruits themselves 

 there is any obvious adaptation to this mode of 



