WHAT PLANTS DO FOR THEIR YOUNG. 1 55 



eating the pulpy exterior. So, many plants have 

 acquired fruits of this description — edible fruits, 

 intended for the attraction of birds and animals. 

 As a rule the animals disperse the seeds in the 

 well- manured soil near their own nests or lairs, 

 so that the young plants produced from such fruits 

 start in life under exceptional advantages. 



Fruits that seek to attract animals use much 

 the same baits to allure them in the way of colour 

 and sweet taste as do the flowers that seek to at- 

 tract insects. But just as almost any part of the 

 flower may be brightly coloured, so almost any 

 part of the fruit may be sweet and pulpy. Thus 

 we get an astonishing and rather embarrassing 

 variety of special devices in this matter. 



A few instances must suffice us. In the rasp- 

 berry and blackberry the fruit consists of sepa- 

 rate carpels, in each of which the outer coat be- 

 comes soft and sweet, while the actual seed is 

 hard and nut-like. In the one case the fruit is 

 red, in the other black, but very conspicuous 

 among the green leaves in autumn. These ber- 

 ries are eaten by birds, and their seeds are dis- 

 persed in copse or hedgerow. But in the straw- 

 berry, which is a near relation of both, with a very 

 similar flower, the actual carpels remain to the end 

 quite small and seed-like; they are the tiny hard 

 objects scattered about in pits like miniature nuts 

 over the surface of the ripe berry. Here it is the 

 common receptacle of the fruit that swells out 

 and reddens, the part answering to the central 

 piece which comes out whole in the middle of the 

 raspberry; so that what we eat in the one fruit is 

 the very same part as what we throw away in the 

 other. In the plum, the cherry, and the peach, 

 gn the other hand, there is but one carpel, and ite? 



