2 TALKS AFIELD. 



the clematis that clambers over our door- 

 way ? 



Notwithstanding the great external dis- 

 similarities of plants, the botanist is able to 

 trace relationships which are decisive. The 

 characters which determine these relation- 

 ships are not confined to any organ or to 

 any part of the plant : they may exist in the 

 roots, in the stems, in the leaves, in the gen- 

 eral habits of the plants, but especially in 

 the flowers and the fruits. 



This leads us to a definition of the term 

 fruit. The botanist uses this word in a very 

 general way. It is ai3plied to the seed-case 

 and its contents. The fruit may be a pop- 

 py-pod with its innumerable seeds, a pea-pod, 

 a rosy berry like the currant, an orange, a 

 pumpkin, a beech-nut, an acorn, a walnut, a 

 spore-case of a fern or a moss, or a grain of 

 wheat. The contents of the seed-case are 

 not always true seeds, and we must now de- 

 mand a definition of a seed. If 

 we remove the thin outer cover- 

 ing of a bean and pry apart the 

 halves of which it is composed, 

 ^^^" ^' an object like Fig. 1 will be pre- 

 sented. Between the large separated por- 

 tions is a little object not unlike a bud, and 



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