X Suggestions for Future Study 193 



to cross or self- fertilisation, and thereafter the petals and 

 sepals, as at best accessories to this main function, direct 

 or indirect, mechanical or attractive (if not largely 

 subordinate to mere external and protective purposes), that 

 our morphological interpretations can become either safe 

 or clear. 



Coming in the same way to the study of the fruit, let 

 the student at first severely leave alone the competing 

 classifications, the arid and excessive nomenclature of the 

 text-books, and ransack the fields and garden, the fruit- 

 shop too, if it be summer-time, the latter at least if it be 

 winter. To crack an almond and find out what corresponds 

 to its shell and kernel in cherry, plum, and peach, is no hard 

 lesson ; precisely to compare any of these fruits with a pea- 

 pod may at first puzzle the beginner, but the pleasure of the 

 discovery will outweigh its pains; or similarly to ascertain 

 exactly wherein they agree with and differ from apples and 

 pears, and to make out for oneself the interest in this 

 whole connection of the fruit of Cydoiiia japo7iica^ so com- 

 monly grown on walls for its beautiful scarlet apple-blossom. 

 What is a raspberry ? how does it resemble and differ from 

 the cherries and plums when ripe, from a strawberry when 

 young? What /i- a strawberry ? Is not its flower practically 

 the same as that of an apple ? Think out, then, how this 

 wide difference (yet deep resemblance) of fruit must arise. 

 Again, what is it that we eat in the orange.'' Dissect it care- 

 fully, and look at it in water. Return for more light on the 

 question to the unlikely pea-pod ; if this does not readily reveal 

 its open secret, go to the bean ! The subject abounds with 

 fascinating puzzles of this sort, some easy, some difficult ; in 

 fact, as the rose family well show, the fruit often tends to 

 be more Protean in variety than the flower. These asked 

 and answered, or at least honestly puzzled over, any new 

 set of specimens, say a handful of beechmast, hazel-nuts, 



o 



