UNRIPE FRUIT AND ITS EFFECT 



A Cucurbita fruit, for instance, may increase in weight at 

 the rate of -0032 ounce per minute. All who have gathered 

 strawberries know how quickly they ripen. 



The way in which the sugar is formed is not understood, 

 but unripe fruits contain bitter, unwholesome acids and 

 essences which may produce colic or very unpleasant effects 

 if the fruits are eaten green. Thus the colour is a guide to 

 the animal, who is not supposed to eat the fruit until it is 

 ripe ; if eaten green, the seeds inside the fruit are quite de- 

 stroyed and cannot germinate. Yet animals are so greedy 

 that young birds, young animals of all sorts (even girls and 

 boys) will and do eat green or half-ripe fruit. In this 

 present year there is no doubt that many children have 

 suffered for having done this. Yet if we come to think of 

 it, throughout all the millions of years during which fruits 

 have ripened. Nature has every year clearly told young ptero- 

 dactyls and other lizards, young birds, young monkeys, and 

 young people to wait till the fruit is ripe. None of them 

 have learnt to do so. 



When investigating by experiment, on the vile body, the 

 properties of plums, strawberries, and other fruits, you are 

 sure to find here and there one that has decayed and become 

 rotten. In most cases this is because a bird has pecked a 

 hole in it, or because the outside skin has been broken by a 

 wasp. The sugar has then begun to ferment. Why does it 

 do so ? 



•If you gather a few fruits, put them into a jar of sugar- 

 water, and leave it after closing the mouth with a bunch of 

 cotton wool, then in a day or two fermentation begins and 

 alcohol is produced. That is because, on the outside of the 

 fruit, there were hundreds of an objectionable little fungus. 

 It lives upon sugar and turns the latter into alcohol. This 



242 



