JVOOn Y NIGHTSHADE 7,^ 



the great variation of colour found in the berries of this 

 plant as they travel on from birth to maturity. Even 

 on a single small bunch we may often get this variety of 

 tint ; as many colours, maybe, as berries. The fruit, starting 

 life a bright clear green, goes through a series of gradations 

 until it finally becomes a rich crimson, and these changes 

 are very subtle and very interesting to watch. We may 

 perhaps realise them better if we take our colour box and 

 mix blue and yellow together. From this blend we shall 

 obtain a green that stands for stage one in the life history 

 of our berry. If we gradually eliminate the blue the green 

 becomes yellower and yellower, until it stands presently 

 before us pure yellow pigment, and if we now add a little 

 vermilion to this, our yellow begins to turn orange, and 

 even more and more orange as we add more scarlet, until 

 we have added so much that all suggestion of the former 

 orange disappears, and the result is pure red. We may 

 see the same interesting variation and transition in the 

 fruit of the black bryony, the plant we have figured 

 in our eighth illustration. 



Another curious point that our sketch reveals in the 

 growth of the plant is the peculiar way in which the 

 leaves persist in facing in one direction, while the clusters 

 of flowers, and consequently of fruit, are equally deter- 

 mined to face another. One may gather a hundred pieces 

 of the woody nightshade, and this strange perversity is 

 rampant in them all. It is so ordinarily the habit of plants 

 to direct their leaves and their flowers alike upwards towards 

 the sunlight, that any deviation from a rule so salutary, 

 or custom so general, cannot fail to be noticeable. 



The generic name Solatium is derived, according to 



3 



