92 Flowers and their Pedigrees. 



an almond tree has been known to produce peach-like 

 fruits. But no fruit will permanently acquire such a 

 succulent character unless it derives some benefit by 

 doing so : the change, once set up, will only be per- 

 petuated by natural selection if it proves of advantage 

 to the plants which happen to display it. Has it done 

 so in the case of the strawberrj^ .' 



A strawberry, as we all know, consists of a swollen 

 red receptacle or end of the flower-stalk, dotted over 

 with little seed-like nuts, w hich answer to the tiny drj' 

 fruits of the potentilla. Suppose any ancestral poten- 

 tilla ever to have shown any marked tendency towards 

 fleshiness in the berry, what would happen ? It 

 would probably be eaten by small hedgerow birds, 

 who would swallow and digest the pulp, but would 

 not digest the seed-like nuts embedded in its midst 

 Hence the nuts would get carried about from place to 

 place and dropped by the birds in hedgerows or woods, 

 under circumstances admirably adapted for their 

 proper germination. Supposing this to happen often, 

 the juiciest berries would get most frequently eaten, 

 and so would produce hearty young plants oftener 

 than those among their neighbours which simply 

 trusted to dropping off casually among the herbage. 

 Again, the birds like sweetness as well as pulpiness, 

 and those berries which grew most full of sugar\- 



