134 SAGACITY AND MORALITY OF PLANTS. 



was drawn in a previous chapter to the fact that 

 fruits were roughly divisible into two kinds, like 

 flowers — viz. conspicuous and inconspicuous, accord- 

 ing as the dissemination of their seeds depended 

 upon organic or inorganic agency. The latter group 

 is not only uncoloured, but actually evades notice. 

 Whilst hanging on the tree or shrub which bears 

 them such fruits are usually of the same green tint 

 as the foliage, and are therefore concealed from view. 

 In some cases, such as the Hazel {Coryhis avellmid), 

 the fruits are enveloped in large green leaf-like bracts, 

 which hide them from view by assimilating their ap- 

 pearance to that of leaves. But, as Grant Allen has 

 shown, all of these fruits are of a dark brown or 

 ground colour when ripe. As they lie where they 

 drop on the ground, such a tint must prove more 

 or less protective. Moreover, it is this class of fruits 

 whose husks are generally either poisonous or uneat- 

 able. In many instances, particularly in tropical 

 regions, where fruits have the most agile of all 

 animals, the monkeys, to guard themselves against, 

 the husk develops a great deal of lignine, and grows 

 very hard, as in the Coco-nut It will also proceed 

 further (as in the fruit of the Brazil Nut, Bertholettia 

 excelsa), and not only form a hard, almost impene- 

 trable pericarp, but wrap each separate angular "nut" 

 round with a coating of the same material as well. 

 It is necessary to open a specimen of the fruit of the 

 Bertholettia to fully understand the advanced degree 



