Structure of Fruits. 



tific principles. The best kinds of fruit can be got quite 

 as easily as the inferior. No man is constrained nowa- 

 days to put up with anything third or fourth rate. Not 

 that the procuring of good sorts from the nurseryman is 

 the all in all. Fruiting-plants require care, attention, and 

 watchfulness every bit as much as orchids. It is the 

 successful treatment of these which proves the gardener's 

 ability. That beautiful and far-reaching phrase, " By 

 their fruits ye shall know them," is not more true in 

 morals as a metaphor than in the literal sense when we 

 are looking to those who dig and prune. 



The garden and market-place signification of the word 

 Fruit is, after all, only a part of that in which it is 

 employed by the botanist, and this it becomes important 

 to consider, so that we may perceive how very limited is 

 the ordinary sense. The fruit of a plant is the seed-case 

 when ripe the portion of the flower which in its earliest 

 state was the " ovary," with anything, in special instances, 

 that may have become adjoined to it. Many actual 

 "fruits" are regarded as only "seeds," as corn of all 

 kinds, and the fruits of such plants as sage, parsley, and 

 the sunflower. But every one of these consists of a seed 

 within and a " pericarp," or enclosing case, though this 

 may be a simple shell or integument. Of this seed-like 

 class of fruits there are probably, taking the whole 

 world, quite twenty-five thousand. The beauty of very 

 many of them is delectable, as happens with the embossed 

 cypseles of the hawkweeds, and the polished grains of 

 the forget-me-not. Another twenty-five thousand of the 



