196 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



extremities. One is bound to confess, its evil repute 

 notwithstanding, that it is distinctly, in its fruiting stage, 

 a striking and handsome plant. One curious feature is 

 that the leaves, while growing in pairs, are very unequal 

 in size ; their veining is very strongly marked, and they 

 are of a very deep green in colour. 



The flowers are of a curiously lurid and unwholesome- 

 looking dull purple colour, grow singly on the stems, and 

 are often more or less pendent. The plant may be found 

 in flower from about June to August. The berries, 

 ripening in September, stand out very efi^ectively from the 

 five-pointed star made by the calyx segments of brilliant 

 green at their bases. They have a very glossy, polished 

 surface, and are of a rather sweetish taste. Their attractive 

 character, looking as they do to the uncritical eyes of 

 young children like cherries or big black currants, has led 

 to many serious accidents. In the lower portion of our 

 illustration we see one of these berries cut open, and 

 showing the seeds all packed carefully away within it. 

 The making of these fruit sections is often very interest- 

 ing, and the results illustrate to the full a statement that 

 we made some few pages back, that in Nature nothing 

 falls into its place by chance, but that all is the outcome 

 of a wonderful order and system. 



For those who have lunched " not wisely but too 

 well," off these fruits of the dwale, the following un- 

 comfortable consequences may be predicted — a complete 

 loss of voice, continuous restless motion, an inability to 

 swallow, but yet a great feeling of thirst, the vision 

 impaired, a catching at imaginary objects, delirium passing 

 presently into insensibility, and, finally, death. 



