256 OUR COMMON FET7ITS. 



are scattered upon and half buried in the substance of 

 the common thick fleshy receptacle which supports them, 

 and which, after the flowers fall off, increases in size ; and 

 the calyces, the bracts, the axis itself on which all are 

 arranged, distended with the same juices, combine to form 

 a succulent mass denominated the fruit, the points di- 

 viding the surface into triangular spaces, called by gar- 

 deners the "pips." It is, on a large scale, what the 

 mulberry is on a small one, and, equally with that, is 

 termed by botanists an " aggregate fruit," being formed 

 of a number of ordinarily distinct parts, all grown to- 

 gether and fused into one another, forming a single head 

 or cone. In the species called the " Pinguin " the walnut- 

 sized fruits into which the flowers develop remain de- 

 tached, though so close together that at a little distance 

 the cluster looks much like an ordinary pine-apple. The 

 " crown " is, in fact, merely the end of the stem or branch 

 on which the flowers are arranged, finishing in a terminal 

 cluster of leaves, which, from their position, being thus 

 above the fruit, form for it a natural diadem. In one 

 species, never cultivated in England, but which abounds 

 in China and the Indian Archipelago, each flower on the 

 spike has a separate branch growing through its centre, 

 and bearing a pine surmounted by a crown, so that a 

 whole cluster of separate fruits is thus produced upon a 

 single stem, and, as an old writer expresses it, " the whole 

 plant together looks like a father in the middle, and a 

 dozen children round about him." This plant is grown 

 very commonly in Jamaica as a fence for pasture lands, 

 on account of its prickly leaves, which also, when stripped 

 of their pulp by soaking in water and beating with a 

 wooden mallet, yield a strong thread, used for twisting 

 into ropes and whips, and which was also made by the 

 Spaniards into a very good cloth. Even muslin, of beau- 

 tifully fine texture, is sometimes manufactured from the 

 fibres of pine-apple-leaves, but this is a costly curiosity 

 rarely met with. Within some at least of the conglome- 

 rate group of united berries or capsules which compose 

 the cone of the Ananas may perhaps be found its small 

 oblong and numerous seeds, about the size of a grain of 



