1 1 o Fruits and Fruit- Trees. 



other plants producing similar ones, are so wonderful as 

 to provide a distinct subject of botanical study. They 

 are not new organs. Every one of the tendrils represents 

 what might have been a bunch of grapes. They are 

 a kind of supernumerary foundations or beginnings of 

 bunches, developed in the form we find them, to compen- 

 sate the weakness of the shoots, and to enable them to 

 take their well-deserved place aloft. That such is the 

 true nature of the tendrils of the vine is quite evident 

 from their arising from the leaf-axils, and being often 

 tuberculated with rudimentary flower-buds. The flowers 

 make no show. Like those of the oak, they can afford 

 to be unpretentious. But how curiously formed ! The 

 five petals cohere at the tips, but are free at the base. 

 The opening takes place by their detaching themselves 

 from the receptacle ; they are then carried upwards by 

 the elongation of the stamens, and finally they drop off 

 in the shape of a pretty little five-rayed star. The 

 flowers have the merit, also, of being honey-scented the 

 attribute alluded to in the delicious picture in the Song 

 of Solomon : " The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, 

 and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. 

 Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away ! "* As for 



* The Hebrew word employed in this passage, semadhar, is quite 

 different from the term which denotes ripened grapes. It occurs 

 also in ii. 15, and in vii. 12, but nowhere else in Scripture. The 

 amended version in the " Revised " is : 



"The fig-tree ripeneth her green figs, 

 And the vines are in blossom, 

 They give forth their fragrance." 



