Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



botanical "fruits" come to the front as finished examples 

 of the capsule, the cone, the legume, and of the natural 

 urns, vases, cups, and goblets which Art has in all ages 

 delighted to imitate in gold and silver, marble and glass. 

 A collection of the principal types of these compares 

 well with a cabinet of sea-shells. How beautiful the 

 sculptured produce of the pine-tree; the round head 

 of the poppy, with its ring of little apertures under the 

 eaves for escape of the seeds ; the acorn in its tesselated 

 cup ; the three-fold pod of the moringa ; the ribbed 

 hemisphere of the sand-box tree ! Another set, smaller 

 in measurement, includes those charmingly pretty play- 

 things of nature, the fruits of the common pimpernel, 

 the rose lychnis, the wood-sorrel, the birdsfoot, the 

 willow-herb. They are little, it is true. Are they, 

 then, insignificant? Little things belong to much more 

 elevated reaches of eyesight than big ones. Any one 

 can see big things. The perceiving of little ones 

 demands fine and assiduous culture of the best of the 

 human faculties, the inner eyes as well as the outer. 

 The minims of nature declare far more powerfully than 

 the immense things that nature is "a lute that lieth still," 

 waiting only the skilful musician. 



Yet another great company of the botanical " fruits " 

 presents itself in the form of Berries. The scope for 

 variation is here much more restricted, seeing that a berry 

 must needs be more or less oval or spherical, and totally 

 devoid of carving or filagree. Never mind. There is 

 always a resource. Here the lack of diversity in figure is 



