98 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



ningly induce the birds to be their carriers, and they 

 honestly pay them for their trouble ! 



When these seeds eventually fall to the ground 

 they are at such a distance from the parent -plant 

 that there is no danger of overcrowding. Moreover, 

 they find themselves surrounded by a sufficiency 

 of fertile manure supplied by their carriers, which 

 cannot but prove favourable to their germination. 



In such of the smaller fruits as have no hard 

 stones there is usually an inner tough and horny 

 layer which serves quite as effectually to protect the 

 minute seed within from harm. This may be seen 

 in the juicy little fruits of the Dewberry, Blackberry, 

 and Raspberry. Can we wonder our hedgerows 

 should be so abundantly upholstered with many 

 varieties of Bramble when we remember the annual 

 feasts of blackberries they offer to their best dissem- 

 inators, the birds, and that each blackberry is, in 

 reality, a compound fruit, containing twenty or thirty 

 seeds ? 



This simple and largely -practised device of in- 

 ducing birds to disseminate seeds by altering the 

 usually hard, tough, and unattractive husk so that it 

 becomes a delicate and choice morsel, is not con- 

 fined to any particular order of plants, although that of 

 the Roses has perhaps most largely adopted it. " But 

 this latter order, so remarkable for the members of 

 its species being of the kind we call " fruit-bearing," 

 includes some which have preferred other methods 



